Down Here Among the Wreckage
by Annerb
Summary: Five years ago, SG-1 broke in half. Two years ago, Earth lost. Today, there is one last chance to fix things. But sometimes the pieces just don’t fit back together again. AU, apocafic, darkfic, team, Sam/Jack. In-progress series.
1. Prologue to Part 1

_Warnings: Mature for language, violence, torture, non-con, adult themes, and some temporal meandering._

Part 1: History

**Prologue**

Daniel hasn't thought about Sam much over the years. At first because it hurt too much, and later because he honestly had much more important things on his mind, like Anubis and trying not to die. There simply hadn't been time to mourn old losses, not with so many fresh ones to deal with.

When he did allow his mind to turn to her on occasion, wondering what she was doing, where she was, this is not what he imagined. Never for a moment did he think she would be on a planet as primitive as this one, as distant and detached from what is going on in the galaxy.

On Cimmeria, time stands still, not all that different than the last time he was here, half a dozen years and a lifetime ago. Here on this insignificant planet, Thor's Hammer and the Protected Planets Treaty ensure that no one cares what Anubis may be up to, or that Earth is his favorite playground.

Daniel feels the familiar twist of anger his stomach, maliciously wondering how long delicate, sheltered Cimmeria will stand against Anubis when he finally gets around to finishing off the Asgard. Will they expect the Tau'ri to rush to their aid?

How will they feel when they realize no one is coming?

There is a whisper of conscience somewhere reminding Daniel that this isn't what he's supposed to be like, but anger may be the only thing still holding him together so he ignores it. Always ignores it.

They always said he's the constant one.

Focusing back on the woman in front of him, Daniel takes in the long hair intricately braided into a single plait over one shoulder. Her clothing is homespun, rough fabric gathered across her shoulders, billowing outward until cinching in at her waist above a full, rusty colored skirt. Her bare toes peak out just under the hem.

There is hardly anything left to identify her as Sam Carter. In fact, the only recognizable element is her rapt attention on the task before her, the unyielding concentration on the project in her hands. Only rather than a computer, book, or piece of technology, it's a small square of cloth and the silver flash of a needle as she works small details into the surface.

The walls of her small two-room home are covered in complex quilts that look like star charts and fractals, and he's torn between laughing and raging. Is this really what the great Sam Carter has become? A glorified seamstress?

Her hands haven't stopped working the cloth since they arrived. Daniel wants to rip it from her hands. Earth is gone. They'd lost. Doesn't that mean anything to her?

Doesn't it mean anything that they have one last chance to make everything right?

"Sam," he says, reining in his anger long enough to kneel down in front of her, one hand reaching out to touch her knee. She tenses under the contact and he feels another beat of disappointment. He thought five years would have been enough…to what? Heal her? Bring her back?

So much for his starry-eyed optimism dying with the rest of Earth.

Fool.

He removes his hand, sitting back on his heels, and tries to get her attention even for a moment, looking for some sign that she's listening. "We really need your help."

She doesn't look up, doesn't respond, her eyes intent on the methodical movement of her fingers.

"Dammit, Sam!" he snaps, his hand closing over the cloth. He barely resists tugging it from her grasp, too many nights with no sleep, too many friends and colleagues dead to hold his temper. "Are you even listening?"

"Daniel Jackson," Teal'c says, the warning clear.

Daniel pushes back to his feet, pacing away from her until he's staring blindly at a wall, sucking in a breath in an attempt to rein his frayed temper.

Teal'c is speaking now, laying out their most recent Hail Mary plan to defeat Anubis in an even voice, explaining why they need her. Daniel lets the words flow over him, trying to ignore the hollowness of them. In front of him, one of Sam's quilts comes into focus and this close he can see her tiny stitches across the puckered surface of bright colors and abstract patterns.

Glyphs and equations and constellations are rendered in precise, miniscule lengths of thread. He reaches out, running his hand down the surface.

_Oh, Sam_, he thinks, the anger dropping away only to uncover a deeper well of anguish. Now he remembers why anger is so fundamental. Without it, it's too easy to get sucked down. Like Sam.

How did everything get this far?

Behind him Teal'c's voice abruptly halts mid-sentence and Daniel turns to see Sam's hand on his arm, her eyes boring into his. Having ensured the attention of both men, she holds out one hand, mimicking writing across her palm.

Daniel digs through his pack, pulling out a notebook and pen, his heart thudding.

Maybe…

Sam takes them from him carefully, pausing to let her fingers slide across the smooth surface of the paper as if a precious thing. Shaking herself free of the moment, she haltingly writes a single line of text, flipping the notebook closed when she finishes.

Pushing to her feet, Sam hands the notebook and pen back to Daniel and reaches for the quilt he'd touched, pulling it down and folding it carefully before handing it to Teal'c.

Teal'c receives it solemnly, his hand pressing over hers for a moment as he takes it. Sam reaches up and touches his cheek, her eyes traveling over his face.

Teal'c is the one to break contact, stepping back away.

Sam nods once, her eyes sad, and then turns and disappears further back into the rear of her house.

Daniel follows Teal'c out the front door, squinting against the sun.

"Well?" Cam asks, jumping up from the stump he's been sitting on, meeting them eagerly.

Daniel shakes his head, Cam's eternal optimism grating against his skin.

"She's not going to help us?" Cam asks. He's heard stories about the great Sam Carter for years, the accolades that have taken on near mythic proportions after all this time. He wants to believe she is capable of anything.

Daniel remembers that, too.

"Why not?" Cam asks, looking back at the modest home.

As they head down the hill towards the gate, Daniel hands the notebook to Cam, letting Sam's words speak for her.

_Some things you just don't come back from._


	2. Fragments

**Chapter 1: Fragments**

_Five years earlier…_

"Master!"

A brash young Jaffa, one who has yet to don his first full suit of armor, bursts into the tent. Bra'tac frowns at the youth's willful disregard for protocol.

The Jaffa stumbles to a halt, clapping his fist belatedly across his chest, bowing his head. "Forgive me, Master," he says, visibly trying to rein in his impatience.

Bra'tac simply grunts, pushing himself reluctantly back to his feet. Since the death of Apophis, a death O'Neill promised would actually 'stick' this time, it has become harder and harder to reconcile heady freedom with the discipline necessary to the life of a Jaffa. It is one thing to question, another to abandon all traditions. Just another difficulty on the path of freedom, one Bra'tac is more than happy to be burdened with.

There was a time Bra'tac sent such young warriors to their deaths for nothing but the ego of a false god. Those days are past.

"Speak, Arnok," Bra'tac barks when the youth continues to shuffle nervously. Inwardly, Bra'tac smiles when Arnok flinches. Ah, for the foolishness of youth.

"Master," Arnok finally manages to say. "A woman has come through the _chappa'ai_."

"A woman?" Bra'tac repeats, all amusement draining away. "Human?"

"Yes, Master," he confirms.

"Take me to her immediately."

Bra'tac follows Arnok through the tents of the training camp, pushing their pace only as fast as is proper. His heart thumps with hope he knows is imprudent, wishing he could lift his robes and sprint for the _chappa'ai_.

'Perhaps foolishness is not the sole province of youth after all,' he thinks with a wry grimace.

Once on the forest path and out of view of the tents, Bra'tac urges Arnok out of his sedate pace. "I am not so old that we need crawl!"

Less than five minutes later they break out of the trees. Near the gate he can see a collection of half a dozen Jaffa all loosely grouped around a figure.

Bra'tac nearly stumbles to a stop when he catches his first clear view of the woman.

Praise whatever true deity may exist, it is she.

She sits on the top step, her back nearly against the _chappa'ai_, a most imprudent place to linger if the great mouth were to open.

"Jaffa!" Bra'tac calls, gesturing for the men to fall back even farther.

They open a path in front of him and he warily approaches the woman, studying her as he does. She appears unharmed, but her formless smock of indeterminate color is something Bra'tac recognizes as the clothes given to long-term prisoners of the Goa'uld.

She doesn't move or look up as he nears.

"Major Carter?" he says, one hand daring to reach out to touch her shoulder.

Her blue eyes remain unfocused, intent only on the dirt at her feet.

She is stillness.

And Bra'tac begins to understand.

They are all fools when it comes to hope.

* * *

George Hammond lowers the red phone back to its cradle, feeling weariness settle into his bones, a deep ache that makes him wonder, not for the first time, if he is too old for this job. He's damn tired of losing good people, of sitting behind this desk and filling out forms.

Two papers sit in front of him at the moment, both waiting for a signature that will declare two people presumed dead and end the eight-week long search for them.

It feels like giving up, too much like betrayal. But when the red phone speaks, it's his job to comply.

He imagines, for a moment, Jack O'Neill sitting across from him, his posture casual but his expression intense.

'That's bullshit, George, and you know it.'

"True enough," George says, picking up his pen with real regret.

Before the first signature seals anyone's fate though, the red lights flash, a warning called out over the loud speakers. "Unauthorized off-world activation!"

George doesn't dare to hope, but pushes out of his chair just the same.

"Receiving Master Bra'tac's IDC, sir," Walter informs him when he reaches the control room.

"Open the iris."

When the iris peels back, two people emerge from the wormhole, both very familiar.

For a moment after the first figure steps through, George thinks he may be hallucinating, his own hopes materializing into an apparition, but then he hears the harsh in-takes of those around him, knowing they are seeing the same thing he is.

"Get SG-1 in here," George orders.

Half-listening to the call over the speakers, George looks down at the woman he'd just been about to declare dead.

Sam is backlit by the wormhole she just walked through. Bra'tac stands to one side, his hand hovering near her back, not touching as if he's scared to make contact, but still unsure that she'll remain standing on her own. George has rarely seen the Jaffa Master so disconcerted.

She doesn't look injured, but something about the way she holds herself doesn't sit right with George. They learned a long time ago that not all injuries are visible. Or physical.

"Get a medical team up here," he says to Walter.

The wormhole blinks out behind the two unmoving figures and still, neither of them speak.

Below, Daniel has reached the gate room, coming to a stop at the base of the ramp, the same disbelief mixed with crushing relief on his face that George feels. They haven't seen Sam in eight long weeks, and, as evidenced by the forms on his desk, had begun to fear they never would again.

"Sam?" Daniel asks, his hands twitching against his sides as if fighting back the urge to rush up the ramp towards her.

There's no outward reaction from Sam, not even the slightest movement of her eyes in his direction. She continues to stand with one arm hugged across her chest, her eyes blindly staring at the ramp.

Teal'c reaches Daniel's side then, and right on his heels is Dr. Fraiser. She stops by Daniel, the two of them sharing a moment of silent communication before Dr. Fraiser slowly walks up the ramp. Approaching Sam, she touches her on one arm, but there is not the tiniest flicker of response.

George watches as Dr. Fraiser convinces her to lie on the gurney with ease, just another sign that something is terribly wrong. As she is rolled out of the room, George joins SG-1 and Bra'tac in the gate room.

"Master Bra'tac," George says by way of greeting, the other man bowing his head slightly.

"Where did you find her?" Daniel asks, his voice a bit hoarse.

"I did not," Bra'tac replies. "She was discovered wandering near the _chappa'ai_ on Chulak. One of my pupils recognized her and brought me to her directly."

"She just appeared on Chulak?" Daniel asks. "Do you have any idea how she got there? Where she's been all this time?"

Bra'tac shakes his head. "You see how she is. She has not spoken a word. I am not even certain she recognized me. I just thought it best to return her home as soon as possible."

"And we are grateful for that," George says. "Hopefully, given a little time, Major Carter will be able to tell us herself."

"That is my hope as well," Bra'tac says with a small smile.

"And Jack?" Daniel interjects, asking the question no one wants to verbalize.

Bra'tac's face becomes grave once more. "There has been no word."

Oppressive silence settles over the room.

* * *

Daniel sits in a dim corner of the infirmary watching the steady, competent motions of Janet's hands as they run efficiently over Sam's still form. The gestures are comforting. Familiar. Just like the smell of antiseptic and the feel of cool, rough concrete against his back. It's assumed by many that Daniel hates the infirmary with single-minded focus, but the truth is, no matter how many horrible things have almost happened in these rooms, there is still something fundamentally reassuring about this place, the logic and organization of Janet's infirmary.

Today Daniel is taking comfort where he can, because Sam is still eerily silent, her eyes wide and staring. Alive, but not living.

The last time he saw Sam was across a hazy field as she yelled at him to double-time it through the gate.

"_Don't argue with me, Daniel! Just go! We're right behind you."_

Only they weren't.

Jack and Sam never made it home from that planet.

Neither Daniel nor Teal'c managed to get a clear look at the Jaffa who ambushed them. The Tok'ra knew nothing, could only confirm that Sam and Jack were not the prisoners of any of the System Lords. How were they supposed to search when they had not the slightest clue where to start looking?

It was as if they had both disappeared into the mist of that damn planet.

Even now that Sam is back, it's as if she is still shrouded in mist, not a single outward clue to help them understand where she has been, what she has endured.

"You're going to feel a small pinch here, Sam," Janet says as she draws a blood sample. She's been keeping up a steady stream of one-sided conversation as long as Daniel's been here.

As usual, Sam doesn't answer, but she does flinch, looking down at her arm almost as in surprise.

Daniel sits up, watching closely, feeling hope rise at this brief sign of life in her, but Sam just leans back against the bed, staring once more at the ceiling.

"Sorry about that," Janet murmurs.

Daniel drops his head back against the hard wall.

Teal'c and General Hammond join them after a while, Hammond dropping one hand to Daniel's shoulder in an uncharacteristically paternal gesture. Hammond, he knows, is probably just as unsettled as the rest of them are.

"How is she?" he asks.

"About the same," Daniel says. "She still hasn't said anything."

Hammond lowers himself onto the bench next to Daniel, apparently settling in for the long haul. Glancing at the clock, Daniel knows they all should have gone home by now. No one is ridiculous enough to suggest it.

When Janet finishes with Sam, she gestures for the men to follow her into her office.

"Tell us what you can, Doctor," Hammond says.

"Well, best I can tell, she's dehydrated, a bit malnourished, but nothing serious."

Daniel knows he should feel relieved, but he can't quite let himself believe Sam has come away from what they suspect is eight weeks of captivity without a scratch.

"She shows no physical signs of trauma," Janet continues.

"But if they used a sarcophagus…," Daniel counters.

Janet nods, weariness crossing her face. They all know that a sarcophagus can hide countless evils done to the human body. "At least she's not showing any signs of withdrawal."

"Not yet," Daniel tacks on before he can stop himself. He's not sure why he's insisting on the worst-case scenario. Hadn't that always been Jack's job?

Janet concedes the point with another nod. "Her blood work will be able to tell us for certain."

"Is there any physical reason she cannot speak, Doctor?" Hammond asks.

"None that I can see, sir," she says with a shake of her head. Her voice sounds a bit rough around the edges as if she's angry at her inability to find them answers.

"Should we bring in Dr. MacKenzie?" Hammond says delicately as if to make the words less painful.

Daniel hears it anyway. The general wants to know if Sam has lost her mind.

Janet opens her mouth, her eyes darting to Daniel. "I think that's probably a good idea, sir."

Daniel turns away, his eyes landing on silent, still Sam.

Three days of silence later, the psychologists are plying them with complex terms about post-traumatic stress disorder and frozen states. Daniel thinks this is about way more than trauma. Sam has good reason to be silent, even if he doesn't know what that is. People are worrying that she is perhaps brain-damaged or no longer able to function in the real world.

Daniel knows differently.

When Sam first came back, her eyes were blank and he knew she hadn't really believed she was here, that she could be safe at the SGC once more. But time here has changed that for her. He knows she accepts this now, because even beyond her lack of words and the shield she has erected around herself, Daniel can see that she is thinking and processing.

Hammond has been questioning Sam for nearly twenty minutes now with no response. She shows no interest in pen and paper and though Daniel knows she is listening, she has no intention of responding.

The only outward reaction she lets slip through is the slight clenching of her fingers when Hammond asks her about Jack.

Daniel doesn't think anyone else even notices.

"Sam," Daniel says, breaking his long silence. "We need to know."

He can read her reluctance as she stares stubbornly at her sheets, her breathing unnaturally even.

"Sam."

She understands what he is asking. He knows she does. _Is Jack alive? Can he be saved? Is there any hope?_

Sam lifts her eyes to his for the first time since she returned, a long, electric moment of connection between them. He's not ready for what he sees there: the flat, lifeless quality to eyes that had once been familiar.

She looks haunted. Resigned. He's not sure which is worse.

Daniel knows then though, knows that only part of Sam has been returned to them.

"Jack?" he asks again, his voice wanting to crack over the word as dread squeezes his chest.

Very deliberately, Sam shakes her head, her eyes dropping away from his.

Daniel's left to wonder if this hopelessness is what stole her voice.

* * *

Teal'c watches the interrogation of Major Carter from afar. Watches Daniel Jackson begin to realize that though she has been returned to them, she may never again be what she was.

Teal'c is the only one to truly understand what she probably suffered during her captivity. He keeps such knowledge to himself. He assumes Major Carter's silence must be necessary to her in some fundamental way. He will not betray that with speculation about a tale that is not his to tell.

He recognizes it though, that expression he has witnessed on prisoners before. Prisoners broken by any and all means necessary.

He sees it and understands what it means.

When she is ready to be released from the infirmary there is brief discussion of transferring her to a facility that may more fully serve her 'special' needs, as if she is an uncomfortable reminder of their own vulnerabilities that needs to be hidden from sight. A reminder that only a small twist of fate separates them from her.

Daniel Jackson objects. "You are not sticking her in some damn ward."

Dr. Fraiser agrees. "She's not a danger to herself. She's functioning. She just doesn't interact. She's much better off here, among people and things she knows and is comfortable with."

In the end, Major Carter is given a room on base next to Teal'c's, an implicit agreement that he will keep an eye on her at night, be there in case she has need of anyone.

She never spends a single night in her own room.

Each evening she knocks on Teal'c's door. She always takes an almost involuntary step back when he opens the door, her eyes darting past him to the room behind.

"I would appreciate your company if you wish to come inside," he says each time, stepping back to let her make the decision herself.

Choice would have been the first thing her captors stole from her.

After a moment or two of hesitation, she enters.

She flinches a bit when the door closes, moving to the far wall and leaning back against it. When Teal'c retakes his seat on the floor, she also slides down the wall until her knees are drawn into her chest.

She has never appeared smaller to him than these hours she spends huddled in the flickering candlelight of his quarters, looking as if the shadows might swallow her whole.

She waits, her eyes intent on him and her body tense, until he begins to speak.

He speaks of inconsequential things. He doesn't need to interrogate her, doesn't need to pry to know what she's suffered. She survived it, is coping as well as she can. He can ask no more of her than that.

He talks to her of the last eight weeks, any odd occurrences, conversations overheard in the commissary, or base anecdotes. He doesn't know if she hears the words or is just listening to the cadence of his voice. Either way, he speaks until she finally sleeps, curled up on the hard concrete of his floor.

Each night it is the same.

During the day, Teal'c watches her closely. He notices the way she eats steadily and throws herself into physical rehabilitation with the fever of one possessed. He can see past her silence, knowing there is more they don't understand about what she endured.

She turns to him sometimes, awareness of his scrutiny in her eyes, wary that he might spill her secret. That he might interfere.

"I will assist you," he says, shifting to spot her as she lifts weights, or pacing and encouraging her on the treadmill.

In these moments, she closes her eyes briefly, her fingers tentatively brushing his. It is the only physical contact he ever witnesses her make of her own volition. When the moment passes and she looks at him again, there is only the steely determination of a warrior with a mission.

Teal'c understands this far too well.

He does not know for certain what she is preparing for, what goal she has set for herself. It is enough that he suspects. He respects her right to it and will help her reach it.

Three weeks later when Jacob Carter arrives, she surprises them all by letting him pull her into a hug.

"I'd like to bring her back with me for a while, if she wants," Jacob Carter says, disconcerted by the condition he finds her in.

They protest, but Major Carter takes her father's hand, waits until he looks at her and nods firmly once.

And so it begins, Teal'c thinks.

He has carried her as far as he can.

* * *

A small crowd gathers to see Sam off. Daniel watches her as she enters, people murmuring their farewells as she passes. She doesn't pause or respond, walking straight to the base of the ramp where her father waits for her.

Jacob takes the pack from Sam's hand and begins to lead her up the ramp, but Sam resists, pulling back slightly, and he turns to her, concern creasing his face.

Daniel wonders if she has changed her mind.

But Sam merely crosses over to Daniel and stands less than a foot in front of him. As he's come to expect, she doesn't say anything, but she does take his face between her two hands, the flesh of her palms cool against his cheeks. Her eyes say everything they need to and Daniel knows without her saying that this is a goodbye. Woven into the love and gratitude is the knowledge that she doesn't plan to return.

"Sam," Daniel sighs, batting down the urge to grab her and keep her here.

Her face crumples momentarily and she leans in, her forehead resting against his for a fleeting last moment of contact.

She releases him, turning to Teal'c and grabbing the man's upper arms. He pulls her into a full hug. Sam tenses at first before melting into his arms.

"May you find that which you seek," Daniel can hear Teal'c say in an undertone.

She nods against his chest, her fingers clenching on his arms.

Then, as if she flips a switch somewhere, her expression wipes clean and she steps away from him.

She backs up the ramp, taking the time to look around the room at all the people who have gathered to see her off. At the horizon, she hesitates, turning to Hammond and saluting one last time.

She steps through.

Only three days pass before Jacob returns to the SGC.

"She's gone," he says, looking a little lost.

Teal'c isn't surprised and Daniel wonders if this is what his parting words meant.

The three men share a look, all of them conscious of the same simple fact.

She won't be found. Not unless she wants to be.

And just like that, Sam Carter disappears out into the universe again.


	3. All Fall Down

**Chapter 2-All Fall Down**

Two days after Sam disappears for the second time, Hammond orders her lab packed up. That's when Daniel forces himself to go in there one last time. Driven by the thought of near strangers digging through her things, he gathers together her personal items himself, packing them away into a box.

He'll hold on to them until she wants them again.

Sliding open the bottom drawer on her desk, he finds only one item sitting pristinely in the center. It's a letter of resignation, neatly typed and signed.

The ordered words and calm rationalizations on the form should be comforting. It's proof that there is enough of Sam left that she felt the need to properly resign, to leave things neat and clean behind her. But all Daniel sees is the permanence of it, how carefully she severed all ties before she left.

She's really not coming back.

The days leech into weeks, a full month passing with no news, no sign. Sam's lab is empty now. It won't be long until Hammond is forced to reassign the space, fill it with the work of someone new. The SGC is moving on, firmly relegating Sam and Jack to the past.

But Daniel is still here, sitting in the empty darkness of Sam's abandoned space, trying to reconcile himself to a truth he can't quite accept.

It's just a room, he tries to remind himself.

"Daniel Jackson."

Daniel doesn't look up from the desk at the sound of Teal'c's voice. "I don't understand why she couldn't stay."

And maybe that is the crux of his impasse. Unlike Jack, Sam had the option to stay, to still be here with them. Her departure was completely of her own choosing.

"She has done what she believed necessary," Teal'c says. "As her friends, we must accept that."

"And move on?" Daniel asks bitterly.

"We too will do what we must," Teal'c says, as always, playing the stoic warrior. Just as Jack and Sam would want him to.

Daniel can't hate him for that.

"Bra'tac has asked to see us. We must prepare to depart."

Reluctantly, Daniel pushes to his feet, following Teal'c out into the hall. In the doorway, he pauses, looking back into the empty space, doing what he must.

He pulls the door shut.

It still feels wrong, stepping through the gate with only Teal'c by his side. Daniel knows there is a stack of personnel files on Hammond's desk as he searches for replacements. SG-1 won't be left skeletal much longer.

There's no more room on the premiere unit for ghosts.

Bra'tac is there to greet them when they step through to Chulak.

"You have brought the items I requested?" he asks of Teal'c.

"Yes," Teal'c says, pulling a file out of his vest.

Daniel peers at it, confused, his heart climbing into his throat when Bra'tac flips it open to reveal a photograph of Jack.

"What's going on?" Daniel demands, curiosity about this visit belatedly flaring into life.

Bra'tac and Teal'c share a look Daniel can't quite interpret, but it grinds against his skin, putting him on edge.

"We have captured a Jaffa believed to be a spy," Bra'tac explains, his words careful, almost practiced. "He was caught stealing supplies from a rebel camp on Rhodos. His name is Jatal, and he was once First Prime to a minor Goa'uld called Anhur."

Daniel nods along, automatically filing the information away, but still unclear as to its significance. "What does this have to do with Jack?"

Teal'c and Bra'tac share yet another look, and Daniel realizes that they somehow fear his reaction to this information.

"Under interrogation," Bra'tac continues, "he boasted of his master's accomplishments, including his capture of the fabled Tau'ri warriors."

Teal'c looks displeased by such tasteless boasting, but all Daniel can latch onto are the implications for Jack and Sam. "Are you saying this Anhur is the Goa'uld who captured Jack and Sam?"

"This is what we endeavor to discover," Teal'c says.

Bra'tac gestures for them to start down the path toward the training camps, falling into step next to them. "I have had Jatal brought here. We will question him ourselves."

Daniel's brain is running on overdrive as they walk, wading through all the possibilities this new discovery reveals. By the time they finally reach the tents, he has it fairly well crystallized in his mind.

"Teal'c," he says, grabbing his arm before they enter. "Let me do the questioning."

Daniel has always been able to get people to talk about anything, knows he can use his lowly human status as a way to goad the Jaffa into revealing too much, if his boasting is any sign of his arrogance. He can do this. Even more, he needs to do this.

Daniel gets the feeling that Teal'c is somehow pleased with the request. He nods, handing Daniel the file. "As you wish."

Daniel looks down to see a picture of Sam in the folder as well. It's finally time for answers, for the story that has been eluding them for so long.

Following Bra'tac into a tent, Daniel gets his first look at the captured Jaffa. Jatal can only be described as scruffy. His hair is long and wild, face covered with a partially grown beard, armor patched and dull.

Daniel isn't sure he's ever seen a Jaffa quite this unkempt before, not even in the heat of battle. He doesn't so much look like a spy as a hermit, someone living on barest levels of subsistence to judge by the gauntness of his features. Only the bright glint of his gold tattoo speaks to the high position he must have once held.

"We wish to know if you have ever seen this woman," Daniel says, holding out the photo of Sam.

Jatal seems surprised that Daniel is questioning him rather than one of the Jaffa, his eyes glittering dangerously. "I will not be addressed by this human."

"You speak as if you have a great many choices in front of you, Jaffa," Bra'tac says, his voice calm despite the unspoken threat underlying it.

When Jatal swallows his rage and drops his eyes to the floor, Daniel realizes that Bra'tac has likely said or done something to ensure the Jaffa's cooperation. At this point, Daniel doesn't really care as long as he will speak.

"The woman," Daniel repeats.

Jatal's eyes lift, looking at the photo. "Yes," he says. "She was a prisoner of my master."

"Anhur," Daniel says in confirmation.

Jatal seems to take umbrage that a mere human would dare speak his god's name, but nods nonetheless, the gesture stiff, angry.

"Was," Daniel repeats, purposively layering the word with the slightest edge of a sneer. "She escaped, didn't she?"

The Jaffa scoffs. "She did not escape. I _made_ her go through the _chappa'ai_."

"Are you trying to say that you…rescued her?"

Jatal's eyes widen as if Daniel has just accused him of being a _shol'va_. "I did not," he says, his voice tight. "I merely sent her away. Her welfare was not of my concern."

Daniel's eyes dart to Teal'c. He hadn't expected to hear this.

"Did Anhur order you to do this?" Teal'c asks, taking a step closer.

Jatal shifts with what Daniel would call embarrassment if he hadn't been a Jaffa. "No," he admits. "He did not."

"Then why did you do it?" Teal'c presses. "You must have known it would mean banishment."

"I did it in service of my god," he snarls. "His obsession with her was destroying him. He lost _two_ planets in the time he was with her, nearly half his territory! She would have been the end of him."

"You could have just killed her," Daniel observes with more calm than he feels, because something here still doesn't feel quite right. "But instead, you delivered her to the home of the resistance."

The Jaffa growls, but eventually drops Daniels's gaze. "She showed an admirable amount of courage," he admits with grudging respect. "I do not believe I heard her beg once, even with everything that was done to her."

It's the first confirmation of what Sam endured during her absence. Daniel feels bile rising on the back of his tongue.

"She was tortured?" Bra'tac asks.

"Quite extensively," Jatal confirms.

Daniel walks a few paces away under the guise of pulling his canteen out of his pack. He takes a long drink, trying to disguise how unsettled he is. It's nearly impossible to listen to such a cavalier description of what Sam endured, especially from someone who had just stood by and watched it happen, or worse, participated.

Bra'tac clears his throat. "And were there any other prisoners? Someone who perhaps came in with Major Carter?"

"Just the _ha'shak_," Jatal says with a dismissive wave of his hand.

"This man?" Teal'c asks, passing him a photo of Jack.

"That was him," he confirms with a nod, his eyes sliding off the photo as if reluctant to look upon it. It's a strange reaction to something he seemed so blasé about only moments before.

Daniel doesn't miss Jatal's use of the past tense.

Bra'tac reaches out, grabbing the Jaffa's shoulder. "What became of him?" he demands.

The Jaffa is confused by their interest in something he obviously finds trivial. "He was… _terac shri_."

The words ripple through the tent, neither Bra'tac nor Teal'c quite able to hide their reactions.

"Oblivion," Daniel automatically translates, staring keenly at Teal'c. He isn't clear on the significance of the term. He turns to Bra'tac, who is visibly shaken. "What does that mean? That Jack is…dead?"

"No," Bra'tac says, not taking his eyes from Anhur's Jaffa. His tone implies that whatever _terac shri_ means, it is much worse than death.

Teal'c turns, walking until he is staring out the opening of the tent, like he can't speak the words while looking at them. "_Terac shri_ refers to the destruction of a host's soul in the moment of blending."

There's a faint buzzing in Daniel's ears as he stares at Teal'c's back, trying to reconcile the words.

"Are you saying that Jack is…?" Daniel trails off, not quite able to speak the words.

Teal'c turns to look at him. "O'Neill _is_ Anhur."

Blindly, Daniel gropes for the nearest chair, lowering himself into it. He glances at Bra'tac, hoping for disagreement perhaps, but the Jaffa Master only nods in confirmation.

"It is a great gift," Jatal remarks, but Daniel doesn't have any room to spare his misguided words a thought.

"For such a minor Goa'uld, taking one of the hated Tau'ri rebels as host would have been too much to resist," Bra'tac surmises in a strangely detached voice. "Used wisely, he could exploit it to great advantage with the System Lords, perhaps increase his influence and power."

The idea of Jack O'Neill's knowledge and abilities in the hands of a Goa'uld, minor or not, is grim as hell.

That's when it finally all slams together in Daniel's mind, the understanding shuddering into place. Whatever Sam suffered, she would have suffered at the hands of Jack.

Daniel's eyes latch onto Teal'c, a beat of understanding between them.

At least now they have a pretty good idea where Sam went.


	4. Eight Weeks

Warning: _**Mature**_ for language, violence, torture, non-con, and adult themes.

**Chapter 3: Eight Weeks**

Sam lies on her bed, or rather the padded shelf that passes for a bed on Tok'ra bases. She reaches for sleep she knows won't come, too much suppressed energy vibrating through her body to relax.

On the floor, her pack sits ready, full of supplies smuggled from the SGC and information pilfered from the Tok'ra, a race so trusting or so arrogant that they don't even have doors. She tries to feel guilty for taking advantage of them, but it's been so long since she's felt anything that she can't quite conjure the emotion.

They don't matter. The Tok'ra, like everything else, are simply a means to an end.

A fact only compounded by their treatment of her since her arrival with her father a few days before. It's obvious she makes them nervous, that most of the Tok'ra don't know what to say or how to act around her. She's not sure if that is because she was so recently captive to a Goa'uld and saw up close what genetic potential the Tok'ra drag around, or if it's just her silence.

With no symbiote, Sam is alone in her mind. So how can she possibly survive without communication? For the Tok'ra, that sort of silence is a nightmare.

They view her as incomplete, and they're right. Just not in the way they think.

She's been nothing but a body since long before she lost her words.

* * *

_Sam's been in the cell for nearly a day without seeing any of the rest of SG-1. She doesn't know if they managed to make it back to the gate or not, but her solitary cell is a good indication that they have eluded the other Jaffa. It is enough of a sign to give her hope._

_For the most part, she has been left alone. Other than one unprovoked kick to the ribs, she is uninjured. Their disinterest works to her advantage. Maybe they won't realize she is worth torturing._

_It is hours until she hears noises in the distance. Someone is approaching her cell. Having already searched the chamber, she knows there is nothing to be used as a weapon, but she still places herself behind the door where she can take a swing at whoever enters._

_The door creaks opens, and, just as Sam is about to attack, she recognizes a familiar voice whispering urgently._

"_Carter?"_

_Sam drops her arms and steps out from behind the door. "Sir!"_

"_You okay?" the Colonel asks, his eyes running over her, looking for evidence of injury. _

_Sam smiles and takes a step closer to him, eager to get the hell out of here. He reaches a hand out to her, but her smile falters when her brain finally registers something it shouldn't be feeling._

_The sickening crawling sensation at the base of her skull that is the inheritance of Jolinar's violation makes her knees go weak. _

"_No," she says, shaking her head as she stumbles backwards, out of reach of that achingly familiar hand._

"_What," her visitor says, the voice changing and eyes flashing for effect, "aren't you happy to see me?"_

"_Colonel…," she whispers. Her back is flat against the hard wall and, for once, there are no last minute plans running through her brain. No miraculous ideas for escape. _

_Everything is frozen._

* * *

_The First Prime comes for her, transferring her to a mothership in orbit of the planet. Sitting in her cell, she feels the ship surge into hyperspace, knows that the chances of rescue have been seriously dented._

_She finds she misses the stark stone walls and solid wooden door of her previous prison. Here, in this golden cage, she feels as if on display, invisible shields keeping her locked in, but without blocking anyone's view of her._

_He, the Goa'uld as she keeps reminding herself in a silent mantra of horror, comes down to her cell a few times that first day. He rarely says anything, most often just staring at her._

_She chooses to look at the floor, unable to bear the foreign posture of his body, the calculated hardness of his eyes chilling her to the bone._

_On the second day, he enters her cell. All thoughts of overpowering him and escaping are short-lived. The Jaffa firmly bind her hands behind her back, and there are no less than six of them standing watch right outside. She reminds herself that she can't bank on this Goa'uld underestimating her._

_He knows her as well as the Colonel does now._

_Sam breathes slowly, trying not to think of it as she bites down hard on the inside of her cheek._

"_You worry about her," the Goa'uld says. It takes Sam a moment to realize he's not actually talking to her, but about her._

_She fights against the bile rising in her throat as his finger reaches out to slide under her chin._

"_She is very beautiful."_

_Sam jerks away from the touch, but he grabs her face, forcing her back._

"_He doubts you are strong enough to survive captivity," he says, at last deciding to include her in the bizarre conversation that she can only assume is meant to terrorize her, to soften her up for interrogation. _

_There might have been a time, back in the very beginning, that those words could have impacted her, raised doubts. But now after four years as teammates, it's just laughable._

_She rolls her eyes, choosing to cling to flippancy rather than horror. "You're not very good at this, are you?" she goads before she can think better of it._

_That's when he hits her, his face contorting in anger. Stars explode in her vision, the metallic taste of blood seeping into her tongue._

_She bites back a curse, breathing hard through the resulting wooziness. _

_By the time she manages to sit back up, her jaw aching, she's contrite. Not for back-talking to the damn Goa'uld, but for being so careless. _

_For making the Colonel hit her. _

_She straightens, her eyes lowered, her posture no longer confrontational. She has every intention of behaving, needs the snake to see that._

_He either misses it, or just doesn't give a damn, leaning forward to wrap his hands around her throat. His rage seems disproportionate to her simple verbal quip and not for the first time, she feels like she's missing something._

_His thumbs press down against her windpipe, closing off her access to precious oxygen._

_She struggles against the pressure, lashing out at him with her feet as best she can, but getting nowhere with her hands bound and his weight against her. Her vision begins to blur around the edges, her body slowing._

_She wants to tell the Colonel this isn't his fault. That she knows there is nothing he can do. To tell him she's sorry. All she can do is stare back though, because the Goa'uld's stolen all her air._

_It's strange, the thing she thinks of as he kills her._

_Their last mission, Jack's hand in her hair, trailing down her neck and pulling free with a leaf he waves rather triumphantly in her face with a grin. She can almost smell the crisp autumn air of that distant planet, feel the warmth of that sun._

_But then everything dims, taking the memory with it, blackness creeping into its place. _

_At least the Goa'uld isn't drawing it out, she thinks. _

_It's only when she wakes in the blinding light of the sarcophagus that she realizes just how foolish that last thought had been._

* * *

_Her death is a daily activity._

_It takes her a while, but Sam eventually realizes the Goa'uld isn't interrogating her. When, day after day, the monster wearing the Colonel's face calmly breaks her left arm in the same place and methodically splits her lip before continuing to beat into her body with his fists, she thinks it strange. _

_The Goa'uld don't normally go for such mundane pursuits as beating a prisoner. She sees how his knuckles split with the effort, but the beast doesn't seem to mind. _

_During the haze of her sessions when her mind begins to pull back from her flesh and the agony that lances through it, she wonders where the pain sticks are. What happened to hand devices? Doesn't he have Jaffa to do his dirty work for him?_

_No, this insignificant Goa'uld is not nearly as savvy. He simply comes to her day after day, releasing a seemingly deep-seated hatred into her body. Sam almost manages to find a strange sort of comfort in its regularity. At least she always knows what to expect. First the arm, then the face. Each done calmly, methodically. Then he steps back, as if waiting. Sam is never sure what he expects in these moments, but she's not even remotely tempted to fill the awkward silence with information or begging._

_Though he never asks her a question, he eventually grows angry and tears into her body once more. Sam doesn't scream, never lets more than a heavy grunt pass her lips. She refuses to add to the Colonel's suffering. Beyond everything, she is always aware, always knowing that he is here, too. She stays passive, taking what she is given, never making it worse by struggling or tossing out insults as he might have done. Her expression never changes. It is frozen in the one she knows he can read wherever he may be. The one that says she will survive this, no matter what._

_One morning, after waking in the sarcophagus that is becoming frighteningly familiar, Sam's brain begins to register the purpose of her daily sessions with the Goa'uld. She had thought the Goa'uld was either very incompetent at gathering information from prisoners, or he was just playing with her for fun._

_The day after her fifth death, Sam finally realizes what the routine is really about. The Goa'uld isn't trying to break her._

_He's trying to break the Colonel._

* * *

_She's slipping._

_She stops counting deaths after an even dozen. The numbers just don't interest her anymore._

_Each time she comes out of the sarcophagus, she feels smaller, less concrete, like pieces of her are flaking away with every hit. It's terribly hard to be too concerned though, not when hours can flit by as she stares unfocused at her cell wall, the buzz of the sarcophagus sliding across her skin, wiping everything else away._

_Jolinar's voice still occasionally intrudes when she least expects it._

'_We don't use the sarcophagus,' she hisses._

_That might mean something if Sam had anything resembling a choice._

_She idly wonders exactly how much of her soul she has to lose before the pain will fail to reach her. How long until she ceases to be anything but a body?_

_She's beginning to forget why she is supposed to hold on in the first place._

_He's always there to remind her._

* * *

_When it comes down to it, Sam Carter realizes she is capable of a great many things. _

_She can, with conscious effort, divorce the hard, icy brown eyes from ones that had once sparkled warmly with wit and affection._

_She can imagine that the long, calloused fingers that leave bruises on her flesh are unfamiliar and that she has not, in fact, ever yearned to feel them skim gently over her skin._

_She can even pretend that he is dead, rather than brutally possessed, that this is a dream, a residual nightmare, or another reality slightly askew. _

_Yes. Sam Carter is capable of a great many things. _

_Never more so than the day they finally, **finally** underestimate her. The Goa'uld's back is to her, his attention already somewhere else as she finishes dying, his lotar carefully washing his hands of her blood. He leaves it to his Jaffa to retrieve Sam and carry her to the sarcophagus. _

_Their familiarity with the routine makes them sloppy, and somehow Sam is not yet so far gone not to notice it, some dormant part of her brain resurrecting to scream orders at her. _

_The Jaffa is foolish enough not to check that she is completely dead before releasing her from her restraints. It's a small thing, a tiny glitch born of arrogance, but for Sam, it is enough. With strength even she marvels at, she manages to shove out of his careless grasp and fill her shaking fingers with the cool steel of his knife._

_It takes two steps and every single capability she still has left to cross the distance to the Goa'uld, but somehow she makes it. _

_As she lifts the blade his throat though, she learns something else about herself. Something she'll find hard ever to forgive._

_Standing there, his life in her hands, she finds she cannot ruthlessly dig the knife into his flesh, piercing both delicate spines with one slice. It's the one ability that escapes her._

_She can't kill him._

_In that moment, he is not the monster that has been torturing her for weeks, he is simply the friend she has known for four years, and even more, the man she... _

_Oh, God._

_She meets his eyes and freezes. She imagines the Colonel in there somewhere, ordering, demanding her to do it. But this one moment of hesitation, her unwillingness, is enough for the fumbling Jaffa to regain his composure. _

_As rough hands disarm her and slam her back into the wall to bind her once more, she forces herself to meet the Goa'uld's gaze, knowing that somewhere, deep inside, he is watching._

"_I'm sorry," she whispers through chapped lips and a broken jaw, knowing she has failed him. _

_There is no response from Jack O'Neill other than golden, flashing eyes. As he presses the blade she had stolen against her throat, she can only think that her weakness has damned them both. She can feel it physically, another large part of her soul ripping away, dripping out onto the hard floor of her cell._

_Her blood begins to run freely down her neck and over her chest and her only thought is for Jack._

_Could he ever forgive her this?_

* * *

_The day after she fails to kill Jack, the pattern that is her one source of comfort changes. She wakes in the sarcophagus as always, but, after being dropped back in her cell, she is left alone. For days._

_For a while it seems like a new sort of psychological torture. And it's working. Sam jumps at every sound, never knowing what's coming next. Is he finished with her? Is he going to kill her now? Or has something happened? _

_She paces the cell aimlessly, dimly aware that part of her seems to miss the routine of torture._

_By the middle of the third day, she develops a fever. Her body aches and even lying in complete stillness on the ground makes her feel like she has broken every bone in her body. Sweat pools in the hollows of her flesh and her shaking hands cannot be stilled, even for a moment._

_Some small part of her brain registers that the Goa'uld has put her in the sarcophagus every day for weeks and weeks only to cut her off entirely. _

_Withdrawal._

_Her body is falling apart._

_She vaguely remembers him visiting her. Just standing in the doorway, watching her as she lay shivering, curled up on the hard floor. She is sure she begged him to stop the agony. Even she is not incoherent enough not to recognize the irony._

_Six days with no sarcophagus and she begins to hallucinate. Dark forms swirl around her, whispering just out of reach. Calling her a coward. Begging for death with his voice and cursing her when she fails to act._

'_You did this. You did this.'_

_She hopes she will die. Because then maybe he will put her back in the sarcophagus._

_And if not, at least it will be over._

* * *

_The first time, she fights._

_She screams and yells and kicks every available part of her attacker. The Goa'uld can't do this to them. Not this. But even if she isn't just recovering from withdrawal, he has superhuman strength. He's forced to knock her nearly unconscious, but he manages to implement his new torture technique._

_It isn't until the sixth time that she finally stops fighting._

_She used to calculate passing time by the sarcophagus, but he is careful now never to damage her more than necessary._

_Her only constant becomes the feel of his hands on her skin, trying to make her respond just to prove that he owns her in more ways than one._

_She simply looks away and tries to remember the numbers that used to mean so much to her. _

_She can't._

* * *

_Somewhere along the line, the beast starts speaking to her in **his** voice. It's worse than the desecration of her body, hearing him whisper her name as he runs his fingers over her flesh in a mockery of true affection._

_She nearly bites clean through her tongue to keep from screaming for Jack to stop him._

_She whispers his name once, in a moment of weakness._

_And then she stops talking all together._

* * *

_One day the beast demands to hear her speak again. He wants her to say his host's name._

_Sam wonders if the snake has somehow lost himself in this horrible dance as well._

_She will give him nothing more, won't let go of this one last thing she still has claim to. He can't have her words._

_He's already taken everything else._

_In the end, she knows her body will survive anything he doles out. Her greatest torture is the knowledge that they are only here because of her, because of her weakness. So she can handle his hands on her body or his fists breaking her bones._

_Part of her welcomes it as the punishment she deserves._

_But she will not speak._

_The beast loses his temper and, for the first time in weeks, beats her to death with his fists._

_At least it's familiar._

* * *

_The renewed buzz of the sarcophagus has barely begun to abandon her skin when she wakes to the groaning protest of the ship shuddering around her. She listens to each impact, the thunder of feet in the corridor, and waits for that one perfect shot._

_The battle lasts less than twenty minutes before she feels the surge of the damaged ship limping into hyperspace. _

_Another missed opportunity._

_After the battle, she is left alone for days on end. She knows it can't last._

_Sure enough, the First Prime eventually appears to once again lead her to a session with the beast. Only this time he turns down a different corridor, wrenching her arm when she lags behind in confusion. _

"_Move," he demands, shoving her from behind._

_She walks dutifully, not bothering to wonder what new game the Goa'uld may have devised. She doubts it can be any worse._

_It's not until the whine of the rings whip up to surround them that she realizes they are leaving the ship._

_And then she is outside, breathing fresh air with the insistent press of a staff weapon against her spine. She moves forward, the tall grass brushing the tips of her fingers as she crosses the open meadow, her eyes focusing on the silver glint of a Stargate in the distance._

_She stands quietly to the side as he dials, for once feeling absolutely nothing as the wormhole flushes into life. No awe, no excitement, no fear. _

_There's nothing left._

"_Go," he demands, gesturing toward the event horizon._

_She doesn't know if the Jaffa understands things like irises and IDCs, but neither had she bothered to look at the DHD as he dialed to see what fate he might be sending her to. _

_It's not clear if this is amnesty or execution._

_Is there a difference?_

_She steps into the wormhole without hesitation, hoping that maybe, just maybe, she might not rematerialize on the other side. Ending up nothing more than residue on the back of Earth's iris would be a sort of salvation in itself._

_When the tall stones of Chulak materialize around her, she nearly weeps with disappointment._

* * *

On the planet's surface, pack heavy against her shoulders, Sam turns her back on the Tok'ra base and the woman she'd been a lifetime ago.

She scrambles up a steep incline, the sand leeching away under her feet. She feels the renewed strength of her thighs as they work against unstable footing, feels the steady breath of a body prepared for exertion.

She's ready.

One last mission.

Against the inky sky, the Stargate stands bathed in moonlight. She passes the lone sentry without comment. She's a ghost now because she's invisible or the sentry just doesn't care enough to ask. Either way, she's insubstantial.

Dialing the address with deliberate care, she watches the glyphs flash in the bright moonlight of the desert.

She knows her father still sleeps in the caverns below her feet. She doesn't have the words to explain to him what must be done. To explain that every time she closes her eyes, she sees his face, hears the words he couldn't say.

'_You did this. You did this.'_

They made her leave him there alone.

No one understands. She never wanted to be rescued in the first place.

There's nothing left to rescue.


	5. World on Fire

**Chapter 4: World on Fire**

Jacob shifts in his seat, rolling his shoulders to relieve the stiffness there.

'You know I could-,' Selmak starts for at least the twentieth time.

'No,' is Jacob's just as predictable response.

Selmak sighs but leaves Jacob to his discomfort. He's been sitting in this chair for more than six hours straight now, making minor and superfluous corrections to their heading. His ass is numb and his neck is protesting in at least six languages, but he refuses to let Selmak fix that.

He _wants_ to be miserable, thank you very much.

He doesn't need Selmak to tell him how illogical that is, either.

It's been three days since Daniel and Teal'c showed up to tell him what they learned from the Jaffa Jatal.

Imagining what Sam suffered had been bad enough even before he knew Jack's place in this whole disaster. But at least her disappearance made a hell of a lot more sense now.

While Jatal could not be convinced to give up any of his master's secrets, such as the location of his planets or common flight paths for his ships, the Tok'ra did have some small amount of information on Anhur. Which, as Daniel theorized, is probably how Sam knew where to go as well. And why she had seemed so intent on coming back with Jacob in the first place.

He still thinks he should have seen that coming.

'And if you somehow had, do you really believe you could have stopped her?' Selmak asks.

God, he really misses being able to brood in peace.

Next to them, Daniel drops into the open seat, a food bar in one hand and a worn file in the other. The few slips of paper within represent the minimal information the Tok'ra keep on Anhur. Hell, Selmak's first reaction to learning that Anhur had been the one to hold Sam and Jack prisoners had been, 'Anhur is still alive?'

That's how well known this particular Goa'uld is. No one has heard anything about him or bothered to even check up on him in at least a decade. Not since long before Ra's death.

Daniel flips the much-reviewed file shut with a snap. "Is there anything else you can tell me about Anhur?" he asks.

'All yours,' Jacob says, knowing Selmak's been dying for company other than his for hours now. He doesn't really blame her.

"Not a great deal," Selmak says, turning to look at Daniel. "Just that he is a minor Goa'uld descended from one of Ra's inferior breeding lines."

Daniel leans forward, his forehead creasing above the frame of his glasses. "Breeding lines?"

Jacob's always thought that's a particularly bizarre turn of phrase himself. Like they're referring to themselves as purebred poodles or something.

And just because he's still annoyed and Selmak is trying to be so damn serious in front of Daniel, Jacob dredges up an image of his batty great-aunt Edie's pink monster of a dog. Turnabout is fair play.

Selmak snorts internally but refuses to be derailed. "Yes," she says to Daniel. "The production of symbiotes among the Goa'uld is quite complicated and is strictly regulated. Never more so than since Egeria."

There's an understatement, Jacob thinks. Egeria proved that the Goa'uld were not infallible. Subversion from within.

"I can only imagine," Daniel says. "But how exactly do they regulate reproduction?"

"Symbiotes are bred with their specific purpose in mind, whether they are meant to serve merely as _prim'tah_ or if they are destined to one day be rewarded with a host. While Jaffa and their _prim'tah_ are the Goa'uld's base of power, the reigning System Lords are still careful not to flood the galaxy with an excess of symbiotes capable of one day becoming rivals, not wishing for the increased territorial competition."

"So symbiotes created merely for the purpose of sustaining Jaffa are somehow…inferior?"

Selmak nods. "A Queen is capable of manipulating how much information and memory is passed onto her offspring. As you recall, Egeria herself was able to produce symbiotes that were little more than empty husks."

"It must be a fine line between ensuring the survival of their race, and limiting growth."

"Many Goa'uld find it necessary to have underlings to help maintain their borders. Ra was particularly careful about which Queens his lines descended from. Many of the more powerful Goa'uld System Lords were born of Ra's mate Selkhet, but for many centuries he was also in league with Tefnut, a Queen of little power or significance. It was with Tefnut that he created a line of purposely inferior, and therefore less threatening, descendents."

"Good followers, but not leaders in their own right?" Daniel guesses.

"Yes. Anhur and others of his line were little more than vassals to Ra. Any power or significance they had came from him."

"So when Ra died," Daniel says, "they became even less significant."

"Yes. It is probably why we heard nothing of Anhur's capture of SG-1. He has never been important enough to merit being spied upon. He has been lucky enough to survive the chaos that descended after Ra's death but still holds onto only a handful of planets out in the far edges of space."

"But when he took Jack as his host…"

Selmak shakes her head. "I doubt even O'Neill's knowledge can salvage what is inherently a genetic ineptitude, though Anhur undoubtedly saw it as an opportunity to curry favor with a new Lord, perhaps in exchange for greater protection from his neighbors."

"But you would have heard about it if he had, right?"

"That is correct."

Daniel leans back in his seat, peering thoughtfully out into space for a while. "Jatal did let slip that Anhur has recently suffered great losses."

Jacob reemerges. "Maybe he's so busy getting his ass kicked, he hasn't had the chance to contact the System Lords."

"But you _do_ think this is where Sam's gone, right?"

"Yeah, I think so," Jacob says, rubbing wearily at his neck. "You guys have always been big on not leaving anyone behind, right?"

"Right," Daniel agrees.

While it will take them over a week to arrive at the first of Anhur's known planets, they have to assume Sam took the shorter, much more reckless path of dialing directly. No one seems to want to speak the obvious truth, but Jacob knows without being told. Sam has proven she is no longer thinking straight and, even worse, that she feels she has very little left to lose.

It scares the hell out of him.

As does the fact that there is very little chance they will reach her in time.

So Jacob shifts in his seat again, feeling a particularly nasty twinge in his back, and minutely fixes their flight path.

It's all he can do.

* * *

It's not until the third planet that they hit pay dirt.

"Hey guys," Jacob calls out. "Get up here."

They spent four days scouting the first system Anhur had been known to control at some point, slipping into the region under cloak and monitoring communications between the surprisingly frequent ships. None of them belonged to Anhur though, and it seemed quite obvious that Olokun now ruled the system, having recently expanded outward from his neighboring territory. They have to assume the two planets there were the two Jatal mentioned.

It took another few days to reach the second, even more isolated system. Here it seems that Jacob doesn't even need to bother with the cloak. They have yet to see a single ship, or find any trace of habitation.

It's only when Jacob orbits the fourth planet that he finally picks up signs of civilization, meager as they are.

"What have you discovered?" Teal'c asks as he and Daniel appear behind him.

"This planet is definitely inhabited," Jacob says, beginning another scan of the surface. "There's a Stargate, and a few scattered pockets of civilization radiating outward from it."

"Wait," Daniel says, pointing to the screen. "What is that? On the mountain?"

"I'm not sure," Jacob says, maneuvering the ship into a lower orbit now that he's fairly convinced there are no other ships in the area.

The clouds pull back slowly, revealing a lush jungle and the dominating mountain that overlooks the entire region.

"Jesus," Jacob breathes when he gets his first clear view.

"Is that…?" Daniel asks.

It's a mother ship, or at least it had been at one point. Now it is little more than a broken shell, vast regions of the hull ripped clean away, interior chambers exposed to the sky.

"This damage is fairly recent," Teal'c observes, slipping into the seat next to Jacob.

"How recent?" Daniel asks.

"Less than three weeks."

They're too late. Much too late.

Jacob isn't really sure what he expected Sam to have done, hadn't allowed himself to think of things so concretely, but this… God, what has she done? How far has she gone?

"There is a small village less than ten kilometers from the ship," Teal'c notes.

"We should see if any of the villagers are willing to talk to us."

Either Daniel doesn't quite get what this destruction might mean, or he's doing a better job of clinging to unfounded hope than Jacob is.

He knows what this looks like: a suicide mission.

Jesus.

"Jacob Carter?"

He doesn't respond, just lets Selmak take over, guiding the ship smoothly toward the village. Lets her walk the distance for them, answer Daniel's questions and deal with Teal'c's knowing glances.

The villagers speak some variant of a language Jacob doesn't know and doesn't bother to figure out. He just stands by Daniel's side as he quietly translates what the village elder says.

"They believed her to be a pilgrim come from a distant village for the seasonal offerings. She was there two weeks before the great ship came. She went into the temple," Daniel translates, "and soon after the surviving pilgrims ran back into the village with tales of slaughter, of the God's warriors…falling before her wrath. She was adorned with objects of great power and seemed to understand the magic of the Gods."

"That has to be Sam, right?" Daniel asks, turning to Teal'c for agreement.

Of course it is. Do they know anyone else capable of traveling halfway across the galaxy just to blow the hell out of an insignificant Goa'uld?

The village elder continues, his gestures broadening and his speech picking up speed. "Before the sun lay down on the horizon, the sky lit with fire and smoke, the very earth itself crying out, shuddering under our feet."

"And what became of Major Carter?" Teal'c asks.

Daniel inquires and the man makes a sharp horizontal gesture with his hand.

"None came again from that place," Daniel translates, his voice faltering and Jacob thinks he might finally be getting the picture. "Only ghosts remain."

No matter who they speak to, the story is the same.

The villagers talk to Daniel in hushed voices about the angel of death, how already the children are warned never to stray near the burned out shell.

Haunted, they say. Cursed.

By the woman with dead eyes who came and set them free.

* * *

_Anhur sits in audience on his throne, the flickering torchlight glinting off the rich fabric of his robes. At his feet, a wide array of the residents of Theradan kneels, preparing for their yearly offerings as the priests chant lowly in the background._

_Tapping his fingers impatiently against the arm of his throne, Anhur scans the crowd, noting any humans who might have potential as good stock for more Jaffa. _

_His mind is far from the familiar cadence of the rituals, instead he plans his meeting with Tefnut for more symbiotes to replenish his dwindling stock, to rebuild his army. She grows very old, her production dropping off dangerously, but Anhur hopes to not need her much longer. Once his army has grown to reasonable numbers again, he will be secure enough to risk contacting Olokun for safe passage to the next meeting of the System Lords. _

_If that meeting goes as planned, he will easily find a new Queen. And so much more._

_The details and plans twist about in his mind, running various permutations. Despite the new options open to him, he still feels the unwelcome pressure of his desperate situation. Olokun presses closer everyday, tightening the noose around Anhur's neck. Many things will have to go perfectly right for this to work, Tau'ri host or not._

_He must not fail._

_Sitting back in his throne, Anhur lets the obeisance of his followers soothe his fractured thoughts; lets the riches they offer him wash away his anxiety. Everything will soon be as it should._

_His mind thus occupied, it takes him far longer to pick her out of the crowd than it should. She wears dusty robes, her face lowered to blend in with the other worshipping pilgrims. _

_In fact, it is not until she stands that he finally sees her, the beige fabric of her cloak falling away to reveal a dark green garment crisscrossed with a small arsenal of weapons._

_His Jaffa are similarly slow on the uptake, the first two falling to the rattling fire of her weapons before any think to lift their own._

_The pilgrims scatter, screaming, adding to the chaos of the scene. He loses her in the crowd for a moment, a few of them falling here and there in the crossfire, the Jaffa using them as shields, but even this does not slow down the onslaught of her attack._

_Anhur watches her slaughter his few remaining Jaffa without compunction, bodies piling at her feet, a stray staff blast to her shoulder making her stumble, but not fall. He feels exposed as his warriors' numbers dwindle, realizing with growing trepidation that he probably shouldn't have killed his twenty best Jaffa in a rage at her escape._

'_No shit, Einstein,' his host spits, having crawled back out of his dark corner at her reappearance._

_Anhur silences him with a well-placed lancet of agony, driving him back. The host foolishly hopes she brings death, but Anhur knows better. She is too weak._

_Having killed all his guard and chased off the villagers, she at last turns her weapons on him. His personal shield already protects him. He knows she can't hurt him, even if she wants to._

"_Couldn't stay away, could you?" he taunts, just to see the fire burn in her eyes._

_He's disappointed though, for when she looks at him there is nothing in her gaze but ice-cold certainty._

_She lifts a strange contraption to her lips that his still-reeling host recognizes a moment too late. Small darts penetrate the shield, imbedding themselves in his neck. He feels the effects almost immediately._

_As he stumbles to his knees, his last glance is of her bearing down on them._

_He never factored her into his plans._

_Fool_.


	6. Whatever Remains

**Chapter 5: Whatever Remains**

They're dreaming.

Of all the agonies of being a host, dreaming is the worst. In the forced surrender of slumber there are no longer clear lines drawn between the possessor and the possessed. Dreams flit in and out of their united subconscious and it is impossible to separate them: violence, sex, joy, simple happiness, memories worn thin by time and obsession.

Jack doesn't want to claim any of them as his own.

While awake he keeps himself busy with the monotonous mantra of _this is not me, this is not me_. Constant resistance like the force between two opposing magnetic poles maintains a dead zone between them. Between what is Jack and what is _it_.

But, in the rare times that the beast sleeps, dragging Jack down with it, the resistance dissolves and everything bleeds together in a tangle of primordial drives and desires. Strangely, the worst moments are not the graphic images of brutal violence. It is the distant, constant aching need for simple freedom. The desire for, above all things, independence, to exist without constant struggle. It's the worst because Jack can't quite be sure that is him.

Jack's not ready to acknowledge that the snake might have a soul, too.

The ancient memory is like a gentle, tickling whisper, the freedom and base comfort of a simpler life in primeval waters, not dependant on unwilling hosts. A tiny, suppressed part of the snake still longs for it.

Jack never wanted to know that to a Goa'uld the cold sharpness of space is a daily torture dominated only by the stronger need to control. To never be helpless ever again.

He doesn't want any part of it. But when they sleep, he has no choice. It's the closest they ever get to being truly one entity.

It's like that again today, everything smashed together and impossible to separate, only he's pretty sure they're awake.

They are no longer in the temple on Theradan, that much is clear. Instead they are lying on the floor of a large cavern that Jack knows he should recognize somehow, but thoughts are slow and stilted, clumsily dancing just out of reach.

Something is broken.

Gingerly sitting up, everything around them blurs, edges smearing, the sound of water dripping somewhere amplified almost to the point of pain.

Have they been…drugged?

The snake isn't paying attention to Jack or his hypothesis though; his focus is riveted to a dark shape against the wall.

"What have you done?" Anhur slurs, anger, as always, washing away any caution or forethought.

Movement, out of the corner of their eye, finally coming into some sort of focus.

Carter.

Oh, God.

Jack remembers now. Remembers watching her take on a small army of Jaffa, recognizing the calm edge to her desperation that marked her as someone with nothing left to lose. Someone who knew the odds were stacked against her and didn't care.

Why the hell had she come back?

Anhur struggles to his feet, intent on catching her. Punishing her. She smoothly steps out of reach, her outlines dragging behind as if caught on the stone walls.

She isn't armed. Jesus, this can't be happening again.

Anhur swipes a hand out at her, missing by inches, nearly toppling to the floor. Reaching out for the wall, he stumbles after her.

She remains always one step ahead until she pauses under an archway of sorts, wavering just out of reach. They lurch closer, stepping across some invisible boundary. Just as he finally touches her, fingers against her skin, their body is lit up as if on fire, searing all their senses, catching them completely off guard.

The snake tries to back away, to escape the deadly pulse, but Carter is there, her hands fisted in their robes, forming an inescapable vise, locking them in place as much as the invisible force that is trying to tear them in two.

The pain is unlike anything either of them has ever experienced, nothing comparable found even in the fathomless, vicious memories of the snake. Anhur tries everything to hold on, clawing at Jack's consciousness, twining itself around him, threatening to take Jack with it, desperately trying to save any small part of itself by imbedding deep inside Jack like nettles snapping off in his flesh.

The pressure builds, a scream ripping out of their throat, and Jack can't tell anymore, doesn't know what is him, what is it, what is dying, what is being left behind.

When the force finally lets go, dumping him forward to the dirt, he's burning hot, shards of pain slicing into his spine.

Then she's there, catching him, dragging him away, stopping only to press a cool cloth to his forehead.

Jack takes a deep, shuddering breath. His body is hesitant to follow the impulse, his eyes opening and closing reluctantly with his commands.

"Carter," he croaks, and he's startled to hear the word actually emerge from his mouth, surprised to find he's back in control. "Carter," he repeats and the cloth pauses, her face leaning closer. He grabs blindly, clenching his hands in her shirt, pulling her down to hear his rasped words.

"You should have killed me."

Her face wavers in his vision, darkness crawling in on all sides, and he thinks he hears her speak just as he lets go.

"I know."

* * *

The first thing Jack is aware of is the throbbing in his head, like a drum echoing each heartbeat. An inescapable reminder that, of all the things he may wish, he is not dead. The idle thought of 'where am I?' results in eyelids opening.

Thought. Action. Will.

This is the way it used to work.

Before _it_.

Under the gonglike beat of his pulse, there is a tiny bubble of hope and he forces himself to reach out, to dig around for the other presence.

It's gone. Or is it?

Everything's too jumbled to tell.

He blinks, but nothing clears. His vision is cloudy and unfocused and he can't make sense of the space around him.

Trying to push up on one elbow is useless. He doesn't have the strength, his arm trembling erratically under him before dumping him back on the floor. It's not just his arm though, he realizes as he risks taking stock of his body. Every muscle feels on fire.

He starts when gentle fingers slide across his forehead. Looking up, his eyes finally focus on Carter leaning over him, her palm pressing down, blessedly cool against the heat of his feverish flesh.

Her arm slides under his shoulders. Lifting him to a sitting position, she slips pills into his mouth, offers water to wash them down. It's too much effort, this simple task, his vision graying out around the edges.

A moan slips out of his lips and she lowers him gently back to the floor.

Only then does he smell it, the sick aroma of burned flesh. No matter how much it feels like it, he knows he's not the one burning.

His fingers find her arm, brushing right below the singed fabric and dried blood of her wound.

She'd come back for him.

Carter makes a soothing sound at the back of her throat, her cool palm resting once again on his forehead, and he lets his eyes close. Oblivion tugs him back from the pain and the fire, and he doesn't bother to fight it.

It's not quite sleep, just an indeterminable period of hallucinations and delirium occasionally punctuated by lucidity. Sometimes he's Jack again, but most of the time Anhur is there, whispering in his ear.

He's weaker each time he wakes, his body shutting down piece by piece until he's completely bound by debilitating stillness. Time stretches so long between each breath that he seems to slip in and of death, each new infusion of oxygen stealing him back to life. He longs for the end more than he ever has before.

Not even Carter's hands, insistent and desperate against his face, can make him hold on.

His body gives up the fight, and he gladly follows.

* * *

Despite Jack's best intentions, consciousness finds him again. Things are steadier, clearer and, though his breathing is now strong and even, none of the pain has faded.

A cool cloth presses against his forehead and he opens his eyes to look into the face of a stranger. Startled, he tries to sit up, but his body fails him.

"Hush," the woman says, one hand easily pressing him back down. "You are safe. I am Linna, daughter of Gairwyn."

He thinks the second name must mean something, but his brain is still sluggish. Not that it really matters. If she wants to harm him there is little he can do about it. To judge from the weakness of his body, he's been out of it for a while.

"How long?" he croaks.

She smiles, sitting back on her heels and wiping her hands on her skirts. "It has been fifteen days since the Hammer took you."

The Hammer. Cimmeria. Things are beginning to make sense.

"Carter?" he asks, equally dreading and welcoming the thought that she might have left him behind.

Linna nods. "She is well. Her own wounds have healed nicely."

"Wounds?" Jack asks.

"Yes. A deep burn here," Linna says, pointing to her own shoulder.

Staff blast. He remembers now. More than he'd like.

"Sam brought me here when she began to fear for your life."

Jack closes his eyes. It's salvation he didn't want, never would have asked for.

And yet, here he is.

"Are you in pain?"

Jack figures his discomfort must be etched into his face because she doesn't wait for his answer, offering him a warm, bitter drink. He grimaces at the taste, but she simply urges him to take more.

"It will dull the pain and fight your fever," she tells him.

He dutifully finishes off the cup. "What exactly is wrong with me?"

Her cool hand touches his arm. "You and your body need time. You must learn each other again. It was the same for Kendra in the beginning."

Kendra. Right. This is all because of the snake and the damn Hammer. His body is purging itself of Anhur, leaving nothing behind but echoes. They dig into his mind like splinters, tiny invasive pieces of the monster left behind.

Jack tries not to think of the snake's cells being broken down and absorbed into his body. Just knows that he'll never be rid of him, not completely.

"Rest," Linna says. "Your strength will return in time."

Lucky him.

* * *

_They are heading down to her cell again._

_She's passed the worst of the withdrawal now, lying still and quiet on her narrow cot in the corner. Gaunt and worn, but no longer hysterical._

'_Just kill me,' she'd pleaded the last time he watched her shiver on the floor at his feet, her hands swiping at invisible phantoms. _

_But maybe that hysteria had been easier to watch than this listlessness. The way she doesn't even bother to protest as the Jaffa drag her up to a sitting position._

"_Do you recognize this?" Anhur asks, holding out a knife. It's the one she'd dared to steal from one of his Jaffa. The one she'd pressed to their neck._

_Carter's eyes dart to the object and just as quickly drop away. She doesn't answer._

_The blow is as quick as it is predictable._

_She's still holding her cheek when he speaks again. "I asked you if you recognized this."_

"_Yes," she says, her face still carefully averted. Her voice is nearly as insubstantial as her body now._

_Lifting the blade, Anhur presses it gently against the base of her throat. _

_Jack doesn't miss her reaction, the relief on her face. She's still hoping there is another visit to the sarcophagus in the near future, is still desperate for it. He wishes to God that's where this is heading. _

"_Good," Anhur says. "Then you will know why this is happening."_

_In one quick swipe, the knife slices down through the thin fabric of her shirt, carelessly raising a line of blood down her torso on its journey. She gasps, unsteady hands pulling the gaping edges together. Only now does she look up, terror and painful understanding on her face._

"_No," she says, sharp and insistent, something in her eyes finally coming into focus. _

_She repeats that single word over and over, punctuating each weak blow with it as she lashes out at him. He's finally forced to stun her, the back of her head slamming sickly against the wall._

_Jack wants to close his eyes but has no control. The thing wants him to watch. Always watching._

_And today, even worse, it wants him to feel. The snake holds nothing back from him, sensations firing straight to the brain. Impossible to ignore, to circumvent._

_The snake makes him enjoy it._

Jack jerks out of the dream, choking back the Goa'uld curse on his tongue. He breathes deeply to banish the images from his mind, to erase the sensations crawling up his spine.

_Not me, not me, not me._

The ceiling above him is inscrutable, swathed in shadow, pressing down on him.

It's night again. Lying still, he can hear the smooth cadence of Linna's breath from where she sleeps on the other side of the room. Beyond that, he can feel someone watching him.

Carter's sitting in one corner, her knees draw tight up against her chest, staring at him in the dim light.

He meets her gaze across the room, and it takes far too long to shake off the predatory echo vibrating through his mind, to see her as Carter and not just a plaything.

He wonders if she sees it.

Looking away, he stares up at the dark ceiling again.

Fucking Anhur. He's a bastard even from the goddamned grave.

He remembers her fingers on his face that first night, her physical proximity. He'd been too out of it to remember at the time, to understand the anomaly in the situation.

He's lucid now, and he thinks she knows it too because she doesn't approach, doesn't touch him again, just watches him from her corner, her arm cradled to her chest as if nursing a phantom injury.

He doesn't sleep again that night.

But he remembers.

* * *

When it is clear that Jack is no longer in danger, Linna packs up her remedies and returns to her family.

Just like that, it's the two of them alone again.

They don't speak, don't touch unless it's absolutely necessary, two strangers inhabiting the same limited space. She orbits around him but rarely approaches. He's never seen her so aimless, so adrift without focus.

He's torn constantly between guilt and hate, leaving no room for whatever other feelings might have been there before. He hates the way she flinches when he catches her staring. Hates that she won't speak. Hates the way she looks at him as if expecting something from him.

Hates that when he looks at her, all he can see is what he did to her.

_Not me, not me._

As he teaches himself to once again walk of his own volition, to lift his arms, to blink his eyes or interpret the signals fed by his body, he also watches Carter and her horrifying lethargy. It's the final evidence of what he suspects, but doesn't want to accept: there really is barely anything left of her.

The purging of the symbiote from his body leaves him weak, but he's stubbornly building back his strength, and with it, his anger. He watches her, feeding his rage until it's nearly blinding.

There's only one other person here to take it out on.

Carter passes by the door, a flash of sunshine and color.

He forces himself to look away.

* * *

Weeks of this limbo creep by and soon enough he can finally walk and lift and take care of himself. She lets him gradually take over the daily chores of their small homestead without a word of protest. Not that he expects one.

It's the fine motor skills that still escape him, the minute movements of fingers, the combination of multiple skills at once.

He works at it with a small ball, little more than a child's toy brought to him by Linna, rolling it between his fingers, teaching his body to respond properly. He tries to focus down on the minutiae to the exclusion of all else.

Especially her.

It's frustrating as hell, the loss of manual dexterity that he once prided himself on. Of course, there are lots of abilities he used to claim to that now escape him completely.

Except denial. He's still got that one honed to a fine art.

He tosses the ball from one hand to the other, his fingers contracting too slowly, the ball falling to the ground. He curses, leaning down to pick it up, when he catches a glimpse of her.

She's hovering again, just out of sight. Always goddamned hovering. She takes an involuntary step back when he turns to look at her, for once refusing to break contact.

The feel of her gaze on his skin has been rubbing him raw for days and he does it without thinking. Before she can escape, he lashes out, grabbing her arm, his fingers squeezing tightly as he pulls her back around to face him.

His first instinct is to break the arm, to feel the bone snap under his fingers as he has dozens of times before.

She knows it, too. She doesn't back away, her eyes almost begging him to do it.

'_She deserves it.'_

Shit.

He drops her arm as if burned, shoving back away from her and the sickening thought floating through his mind. He stumbles on the uneven ground. Recovering his balance, he escapes into the forest.

He comes back eventually. He always does. He's bonded to her in some sick way, a connection forged in violence and betrayal, something he can't shake free of no matter how hard he tries.

He considers walking down the mountain and dialing the gate. But to where? Earth?

They'll want to know…where he's been, what has happened. Ask him questions and expect him to answer. Maybe expect him to explain why Carter barely functions anymore.

Explain why he isn't much better himself.

He can't.

So he stays.

* * *

The dreams aren't fading but gaining in intensity, lingering in his waking moments until they are like constant background static in his mind, burning through him more fiercely than the fever ever had.

Sometimes he'll find himself somewhere outside, near the brook or the tumble of rocks on the west side of the mountain's slope, staring at some insignificant detail. He won't remember getting there, not right away, and he'll have to remind himself that no one rules this body anymore, no one but himself.

It's only when the flashbacks begin to return in hesitant pieces that he realizes losing time might be easier than remembering.

He'd do anything to forget.

Carter is always nearby, probably trying to ensure he won't walk off a cliff, won't endanger what she put the last of herself into preserving.

She has no right to ask this of him.

But so it goes, day after day, the pattern established, setting everything else into motion as the anger builds, drawing him almost tight enough to snap.

He just wants her to be someplace else for a while. She's the last thing he needs to see at the end of one of these spells.

At least until the morning he finds himself on the edge of the meadow, his hands shaking and the hollow trace of the damn dead snake's voice in his ear.

He feels her gaze on him and slips away into the trees, his pace quickening with each step.

As usual, she follows, just far enough away. He suspects she's deluded enough to think he hasn't noticed her. Speeding up around a bend, he steps off the path, concealing himself behind a tree.

At first he plans nothing more than getting her off his trail, letting her slip by and taking off in a different direction. Even a few blissful hours of solitude might be enough to calm him, to shake free of the latest image haunting him. He just needs to get away from her.

But then she's almost even with the tree and he's circling around and grabbing her from behind.

She spins to look at him and he digs his fingers into her shoulders.

"What the hell do you want, Carter?" he snaps, shaking her a little. "Why can't you leave me alone for even a minute?"

Of course she doesn't answer. She just stands there looking up at him, letting him manhandle her without protest, which only pisses him off even more. There's something painfully familiar about the expression on her face and he says it without thinking.

"Do you miss it?"

She's breathing hard as he leans in closer, and he feels a surge of primordial pride when she turns her face slightly away, her eyes drifting closed as if in submission.

He pushes her back against the tree, hears the air escape her lungs in a rush. "Is this what you want?"

Pinning her there with his body, he traps her hands above her head, his fingers digging ruthlessly into her wrists. She struggles against him, her body bucking under his. He feels a rush at the familiar sensations, his body already responding, straining for the feel of her body helpless under his.

'_She is ours.'_

The intruding voice reverberates through Jack's skull like a bomb, shattering the blinding haze.

What the _fuck_ is he doing?

He drops his hold on her, pulling back away, but now her hands are keeping him there, no longer pushing him away, but holding him close, forcing his lips against hers. When he manages to look her in the eye there is no fear, just need mixed with furious loathing.

Is that for him or for herself?

"Sam," he rasps, and God, there _is_ some painful last thread of affection surviving after all. It hurts worse than everything else.

He reaches for her face, barely daring to make contact.

She slaps his hand away, shoving roughly at his chest. She shakes her head, making it clear that the last thing she wants from him is tenderness. Instead she reaches for his belt and, for a moment, he considers letting her. With everything that has happened between them, what can this possibly hurt?

"_Jack," she whispers, her face turned away from what he's doing to her, from the unwelcome hands on her skin._

_There is nothing of yearning or softness in the way she says it. It's simply a desperate plea, asking him to stop this. To not let the snake do this to them._

_God help him, he can't._

_He can't stop it._

'_You don't want to,' it taunts. 'She is ours.'_

Jack grabs her wrists, pulling her hands away from his belt. Tugging her up against him, he watches her face as she stares just past his shoulder, blinking against her tears.

She never cried while she was his prisoner. Not even once.

He lowers his forehead to her fingers, yearning for absolution he knows is never coming.

He can feel her trembling.

"I'm sorry," he whispers against her hands. "I am so damn sorry."

Pressing his lips to her fingers, he steps away and heads down towards the meadow.

He doesn't look back.

* * *

His bag is packed with bare essentials less than a day later. She's sitting with her face down, intent on some project and the glint of the sun off her hair is almost blinding.

_Silky smooth, twining through his fingers…_

Jack roughly shakes off the intruding image and deliberately steps into her light, his shadow falling darkly over her. The change in illumination brings her face up, but rather than questioning or surprised, she simply looks resigned. She already knows.

At least he is still that predictable.

"I'm going," he says, his free hand gesturing down the mountain in the direction of the gate.

She nods, her fingers clenching around a piece of paper in her lap. Holding it out, she gestures for him to take it.

There are dark, angry bruises circling each of her wrists.

Jesus. He only knows one thing for sure anymore: he can't stay here. Not with her.

Taking the paper from her, he is careful not to brush fingers, not to let so much as a touch pass between them.

_Just in case_, the note reads in her meticulous script, with 'Jacob' and a gate address underneath.

She's still trying to save him.

"Carter…."-the unspoken words die and stick in his throat, threatening to choke him.

He has no idea what can even be said.

So he stops trying.

She lifts her hand to her chest and then down to the dry grass, patting it twice.

_I will be here._

It strikes him that she has no words to ask where he is going and he doesn't know if she would even want to. But he has no destination, no answers to give her, even if she could come up with the questions.

He can't promise he will return.

He lets his eyes travel over her features one last time before turning away. As each step takes him further away from her, he is aware only of the feel of her eyes on his back and the continuous stream of nauseating thoughts screaming at the back of his mind.

Maybe she'll be better off if he never does.


	7. You Can't Go Home Again

**Chapter 6: You Can't Go Home Again**

There is something distinctly unsettling about stepping through the Stargate without any idea of what to expect on the other side. Jack is used to standard precautions, MALPs, and clear transmissions. Out here on his own, all he can do is dial and hope he'll come out in one piece on the other side.

And if there's a part of him that actually hopes not to, he ignores it as best he can. At the very least, he figures he owes her more than a careless death.

But he tries not to think of meaningful ones either.

He's come to a few inescapable conclusions during the month he's spent on P5-whatever, one of the many addresses committed to his memory (or maybe Anhur's memory, but he doesn't like to think about that). The planet is uninhabited, just miles and miles of forest slopes. He lives off the land, hoping the labor and solitude might make the noise in his head go away.

It doesn't.

He's finally beginning to realize that it may never. And he knows he can't put it off any longer.

Even though he doesn't need to, he pulls the worn piece of paper from his pocket and stares at her words. He memorized the address long ago, ripped that damning half of the note away, burned it. He's not sure who he was trying to protect with such paranoia. Maybe it was just habit more than anything.

Then again, acting out of habit is exactly what he's been struggling with.

He folds the paper carefully in half, slipping it back into his pocket.

It's time to see the last man in the universe he'd like to, but the only one who might be able to help him.

Stepping out into the harsh desert sun of the latest Tok'ra hideout, they welcome him with the same cautious indifference they always treat the Tau'ri to. Somehow, Jack thinks he deserves more than that. At the very least, suspicion.

After informing him that Jacob is unavailable though, they simply provide him with a bare, cubbyhole of a room and return to ignoring him.

Three days pass as he waits for Jacob to show up. The Tok'ra are as conscientious about avoiding Jack as he is to avoid them. He'd prefer to camp on the surface, rather than be stuck in these claustrophobic caves, if the latest Tok'ra planet hadn't been yet another scorching desert planet.

He idly wonders at the Tok'ra obsession with deserts, and facts and hypotheses that are not his own well to the surface.

"Shit," Jack says, pushing to his feet, resigned to pacing the long hallways yet again. As he turns the corner though, it's Jacob he almost slams headlong into.

Judging from his expression, Jack thinks the other Tok'ra must not have bothered to warn Jacob he was here.

"Jack," he says, the word a bark of disbelief as he stares as though he's seeing a ghost.

"In the flesh," Jack replies.

Jacob takes a long moment, giving himself time to process. "We thought you were…"

He leaves the last word unspoken, but Jack hears it anyway.

_Dead_.

"Yeah," Jack says with a shrug.

For a moment, he thinks Jacob might actually reach out to touch him, and that's when he finally makes the connection. Jacob isn't surprised to see Jack unblended, only surprised to see him alive. And he knows this reaction isn't so much about Jack being alive, but what it means by association.

It means his daughter is alive too.

Jacob doesn't actually touch him, instead walking into the room, putting his bag down in the corner, and pulling his jacket off, each task composed of careful motions as he undoubtedly tries to recover.

It's only then that Jack realizes he's been staying in his room.

"We went to Anhur's planet," Jacob says. "Daniel, Teal'c, and I."

The names are like specters; things Jack knows once meant something to him, only now there's too much space between, too much atmosphere obscuring his life before.

"Theradan?" he manages to ask. Even the word alone is enough to choke him. He wonders if Olokun has bothered to take it over yet.

_Why should you care?_

He doesn't.

Doesn't. Doesn't. Doesn't.

"She blew it all to hell."

Jack focuses back on Jacob. "The planet?" he asks, feeling a sick thrill flutter in his gut.

All those people…

Jacob shakes his head. "The mother ship."

Jack doesn't know whether to be relieved or just horrified at the risk she took. This could have easily turned out so very different. And he thinks Carter was very well aware of that.

He wonders if she's a bit disappointed too.

"Yeah," he says, unable to verbalize anything other than basic acknowledgement of the information. Fighting the urge to pace, he takes a truncated half step, coming to an abrupt stop and sticking his hands in his pockets. "Okay."

Jacob's eyes narrow and Jack has the impression he's being analyzed, each word and gesture being mined for meaning.

"She must have been pissed as hell to take it that far," Jacob comments.

He knows Jacob is reaching, trying to get information out of him without having to ask point blank. Good luck with that.

Shoving his hands in his pockets, Jack shrugs, not particularly caring that he's appearing overly indifferent. It's safer. He's not really here to comment on Carter's mindset, doesn't want to have to examine it too closely himself.

Doesn't want to have to confess to, of all people, Jacob.

"What, that's it?" Jacob snaps, the edge of his temper finally making an appearance.

"What exactly would you like to hear?" Jack bites out, his own anger threatening his forced complacency. "Because I would dearly love to know the right thing to say to you in this situation."

Jacob deflates a bit, looking mollified by the outburst as if Jack's rage is somehow easier to deal with than his indifference. "She's my daughter, Jack," he says, almost an apology.

Jack drops down onto one of the hard benches lining the room. "Yeah, well, she's not exactly a stranger to me either," he says. He wishes to God she were.

Jacob acknowledges the point with a weary nod.

Jack doesn't know what Jacob had expected to hear. April Fool's? That this had all been some nightmare or practical joke? Like they might all be able to go back to the way things had been before, just because they had both been unlucky enough to survive?

"Just tell me where she is," Jacob says.

Jack had known, coming here, that this was a conversation he'd never be able to avoid. "I don't think she wants…," he hedges.

"This isn't about what she wants," Jacob says. "Someone has to look out for her."

_We could._

Jack flinches, but doesn't argue. "Cimmeria."

"Of course," he says. Picking his bag back up, Jacob heads out of the room.

"Where are you going?" Jack says, chasing him into the hall.

"Where the hell do you think?"

"You can't go through the gate there, Jacob. You know that."

"Good thing I've got a ship and a lot of time on my hands then, isn't it?" he throws back over his shoulder.

Jack falls behind, losing sight of Jacob around the next curve. He came here very specifically to talk to Jacob, and he sure as hell hasn't worked his way around to it yet. Which means he can wait around here for another week until Jacob reappears, or he can lock himself into a very small, enclosed space with him.

And go back to Cimmeria.

God, talk about a rock and a hard place.

A few Tok'ra stick their heads into the halls to see what the commotion is all about.

That pretty much decides it for Jack. One Tok'ra is better than a dozen, after all, Carter's dad or not.

Pushing back into motion, he jogs after Jacob. "Wait up."

* * *

They spend the first day of travel in complete silence, which probably would have driven Jack crazy just a few short months ago. Strange that it took a snake in the head for him to finally master the art of stillness.

In fact, it's only their imminent arrival that pushes Jack to engage Jacob in actual conversation.

"How much longer?" he asks, and Jacob jumps a little, caught off guard after so many silent hours.

"Maybe two hours," Jacob says. He nods at the seat next to him and Jack reluctantly slides into it.

They sit there a while, both men intent on the streaking stars ahead of them rather than the subject on both of their minds.

"You didn't check me to make sure it was really gone," Jack observes eventually, not quite able to speak the Goa'uld's name.

Jacob sighs, rolling his shoulders. "We can tell, Jack."

"Really?"

"It feels different. You should know that now."

Jack compares the gentle buzz on his skin he felt when he was near Carter to the crawling sensation he feels now, sitting next to Jacob. He's still not convinced.

"You really should have checked," he insists.

Jacob looks at him, abandoning any pretense of concentrating on the controls. "What is this really about, Jack?"

Now or never.

He takes a deep breath.

They're words he's been rehearsing, trying to figure out how to verbalize during that long month on the forest planet, but he still trips over them. "Have you ever heard…I mean, is it possible…for some part of the…," he swallows, forcing the word out, "symbiote to remain behind?"

Jacob's brow creases as he leans towards Jack, clearly unnerved to hear him sounding so hesitant. "You mean like memories?"

"No," Jack says, fingers digging into his temples in agitation. "It's like…it's still in here, trying to make me do things." He dares to look over at Jacob. "Have you ever heard of anything like that?"

"Anhur is dead, Jack." Spoken with the slow concern of one fearing for someone's sanity.

"I know that," he snaps, pushing to his feet.

It's possible he's just crazy.

_Or just weak._

Shut. Up.

"Jack," Jacob says placatingly. "You've suffered a major trauma-."

Jack cuts him off, raising both hands palms out. "Really, let's not." He doesn't want therapy or pity; he just wants goddamn answers. "Let me know when we're there."

With that, Jack retreats into the hold, closing the door between them.

He remains locked up in there until the ship shudders against the atmosphere of Cimmeria, landing with a soft thump at what he can only assume is a safe distance from the hammer.

Jacob enters the hold, gathering his things without a word, clearly not wanting to waste any time with small talk, only pausing when he realizes Jack is still sitting motionlessly against the bulkhead.

Jacob looks over at him. "You coming?"

Jack wants to. God, does he want to.

He misses her, his mind wandering to her far too often. He thinks that's him, but he can't be completely sure. Even the chance, the _possibility_ of that being it… No.

He won't let any of that touch her ever again.

"No," Jack says. "I'm staying here."

Jacob is surprised but shrugs as if he's too tired to bother arguing. "Ok," he says. "I might be a few days."

Jack doesn't think he will be but nods just the same. Before Jacob disappears out the hatch, he calls out after him. "She…doesn't need to know I'm here."

Jacob glances back, his jaw clenched, and Jack knows he's cataloging this away as yet another clue. By now they must be building up to an uncomfortably clear picture of what Anhur has done to them, exactly how much he has destroyed them.

Jacob deserves to know though, before he's forced to see first hand just how little of his daughter is left.

Jack drops his eye, turning his chair away, and hears the door slide shut after Jacob.

He's back in little over a day, and Jack's a little impressed he makes it that long. He knows how hard it is to see her like that.

"How is she?" Jack asks, not quite looking Jacob in the eye.

Jacob drops his pack to the floor with a careless, angry thunk. "I think you know."

Jack winces. "I mean…does she need anything? Supplies?"

Jacob turns to look at him with that damn piercing gaze of his, pausing long enough to make Jack think he must be discussing something with Selmak. "She's been taken in by a family."

"Linna," Jack guesses.

"Yes."

"Okay," Jack says, leaning back in his seat. Linna will watch over Carter. She's in as good a set of hands as he can hope under the circumstances.

"You can't honestly think she should stay there!"

Ah, and here is the anger Jack expected. "I think Carter has made her choice pretty clear," he says as diplomatically as he can.

"She's in no position to make that kind of decision and you damn well know it."

Jack's self-imposed stillness shatters with alarming ease, his voice lashing out. "What exactly is her alternative? Live with the Tok'ra like a pet? Go back to Earth to be treated like some sorry, broken thing? With everyone walking around thinking they understand what she went through. What _I_ did to-," he breaks off, realizing what he almost said.

Jacob has gone completely still, watching him with growing wariness.

It's about damn time someone did, Jack thinks.

"What _Anhur_ did, Jack," Jacob says carefully, as if talking down a spooked animal or a small child. "Not you."

Jack drags his hands across his face, barely resists digging his fingers in. "How exactly does that work again? Because I'm having a damn hard time telling the difference."

"Jack-."

"Don't," Jack snaps, cutting him off. "Don't pretend there's some magic fucking answer that can make this all go away."

Jacob opens his mouth as if to try but seems to think better of it, lowering himself down into the other chair.

Jack's beginning to realize how stupid he'd been to come to Jacob in the first place. What the hell had he hoped to accomplish?

"What about you?" Jacob eventually asks. "What will you do?"

Jack shifts in his chair because suddenly it's so damn clear. He knows why he came to Jacob. And it has nothing to do with answers. "Do the Tok'ra have any use for a slightly unstable human spy?"

Jacob's face betrays only a split second of something like disappointment before Selmak smoothly takes over. "There is always need of a man with your varied talents, Colonel O'Neill."

Jack eyes Selmak warily, not exactly thrilled with her sudden appearance after days of blissful silence. It's easier to pretend she doesn't exist when she keeps to herself. He rubs at the back of his neck, refusing to shudder visibly.

"You will not return to Earth?" she asks.

"No." Not while Carter sits broken and silent on another planet so far from home. Not while Anhur still controls him from the grave. Maybe not ever.

_Coward._

"Give me a mission," he says, forcing himself to meet the Tok'ra's eyes. "Anything. Just give me something to do other than sit here and slowly lose my mind."

Selmak considers him a moment before taking the controls and lifting the ship away from Cimmeria. "As you wish," she says as they break atmosphere, the abrupt release of gravity bottoming out Jack's stomach. Or maybe that's just relief.

It's another long, silent trip back.

* * *

The Tok'ra give Jack a tel'tac held together with little more than duct tape and wishful thinking and introduce him to his first contact.

It's a start, a distraction. It's enough.

The day he packs the ship with a few provisions and prepares to leave the Tok'ra home world behind, Jacob comes to see him off.

"Linna was teaching her to sew," he says.

It's not exactly the farewell Jack expected. "What?"

Jacob steps towards Jack until he is uncomfortably close. "She was sitting on the floor with the children, learning to _sew_," Jacob repeats.

God.

Jacob is still watching him closely, clearly waiting for some response to this startling revelation.

"I don't…," Jack starts, only to stall out. He clears his throat and tries again. "I don't know what you want from me, Jake."

Honesty may be the only thing he has left.

Jacob takes a deep breath and hits Jack on the shoulder, half-frustration, half-grudging affection. "Yeah. I know," he says, squeezing his arm and stepping back away. "Just try not to do anything stupid."

Jack manages a weak grin. "You know me."

Jacob's looking inscrutable again. "Yeah. That's what they tell me."

His disapproval shouldn't sting as much as it does.

"I'm sorry," Jack says as he turns away from Jacob. He may see it as desertion or dereliction of duty, but Jack's just trying to survive.

"They think you're dead," Jacob says, one final parting shot.

Jack pauses, looking back at him.

The SGC will continue to think he's dead unless he chooses to prove them wrong. Jacob is making sure he gets that.

"I understand," Jack says.

It's probably better this way.

Jacob nods once and walks away.

And just like that, Jack O'Neill, AWOL Air Force Colonel, former false god, expatriated Tau'ri, disappears into the underground.

Phantom.

He spends the next five years searching for an answer that doesn't exist.

The day he hears about the fall of Earth, he listens to Anhur's glee with half an ear; drinks seven Darkinian ales; and almost dies setting off three cases of weapons grade naquadah underneath one of Anubis's drone laboratories.

He watches the explosion from orbit.

_That was foolish, human. Are you trying to get us killed?_

Next time he'll try harder.

His luck can't last forever.


	8. Epilogue to Part 1

**Epilogue**

When Jacob can't possibly put it off any longer, he travels to Earth.

"I've seen Sam," he tells them. The hope that lights up Daniel's face is more than Jacob can handle. Turning, he paces to the window, looking down on the Stargate.

"_You can't hide here forever," Jacob tells her, watching the clumsy work of her fingers on a small scrap of floral fabric. "This isn't who you are."_

_The needle slips, a perfect pearl of blood rising on the pad of her finger. Sam stares at the small wound, her eyes slipping out of focus, going somewhere Jacob can't follow._

"_Sam," he says, touching her arm, wrapping his fingers around her wrist when she doesn't respond. "Sam!"_

_Her eyes gradually shift up to his face, her arm tugging free of his grasp. He feels a beat of hope at the reaction, but once free, she merely slips the injured digit into her mouth. _

_She might as well be eight years old again, nursing a skinned knee. Only even then there would have been a sort of daredevil pride in the injury._

_She's staring at nothing. _

_Eventually, she picks her cloth back up and begins again._

"_They deserve to know," Jacob says._

_She continues to stitch._

"She's the same," Jacob says.

He doesn't see any point in telling her team the truth: she's worse. She's still silent, but before, at least there had been some spark of life, the obsessive drive of a mission to keep her going. Now there isn't even that anymore.

Now she's just a body going through the motions.

"And Jack?" Daniel asks. Jacob feels his spine stiffen. "Was he with her?"

"No," Jacob says, and, technically, it's the truth. If anyone understands the game of semantics, it's Daniel, right? That would be funny if it weren't so fucking sad.

"Anhur?" Teal'c asks.

"Dead," Jacob confirms.

He leaves it at that, letting them think the worst.

It's close enough to the truth. Jack doesn't want anyone coming after him. Jacob wonders if Jack has managed to convince himself that sometimes the gaps are easier to deal with than the truth.

Easier for whom, exactly? Jacob wants to know. Is it better for them to think he's dead rather than a deserter?

'Jacob,' Selmak admonishes, for once being in the position to understand Jack more than Jacob. Her sympathy echoes like feedback through his brain, canceling out his own anger.

"Is she coming back?"

"No," Jacob says, refocusing on Daniel. "I don't think she is."

"But you know where she is."

"Yes."

Daniel's eyes narrow. "And you aren't going to tell us."

Jacob can't say, in that moment, what keeps him from telling them. Surely someone more than Jack and he should know, someone who's not flaunting death at every turn, someone who can look out for her if (_when_) they get themselves killed, or she might be lost forever. But maybe that's the point, and he's not sure who he's trying to protect anymore.

"She wants to be left alone," Jacob finds himself saying. "Could you do that, if you know where she is?"

Daniel's mouth opens, the lie right on the tip of his tongue. Just a beat of defiance before his shoulders sag. "No. I probably couldn't," he admits.

Jacob claps Daniel on the shoulder. "Give her time. She knows how to come home when she's ready."

It's amazing how quickly the lies build up, and how little they bother him.

"I can do that," Daniel says, but Jacob can see it isn't easy for him, not his first inclination. He wants to rush to her side, to save her, to make things better. Jacob's not sure they can be.

He swallows hard against a spike of nausea, wishing to hell he didn't have Selmak's crystal clear knowledge of what Sam probably went through. Wishes he didn't have the memory of Jack's haunted face and the words he didn't have to say for Jacob to hear them.

"I promise," Jacob says to Daniel, feeling the need to give him some small thing, to cling to some shred of decency, "if the time ever comes that you really need her, I'll tell you."

That's all he's willing to give.

* * *

At first Daniel appears on the Tok'ra base every few weeks, sitting with Jacob, discussing inane happenings on Earth. During these visits, Jacob can see the battle going on inside Daniel, fighting between giving Sam what she's asked and demanding to see her.

He needs her, Jacob understands in these moments. She's something fundamental to him.

In the end though, Daniel's conscience always trumps his own needs. Convinced to respect her choices by successfully traversing through the crucible once again, Daniel returns to Earth. Jacob always thinks he looks a bit like a kicked puppy on those days.

He hopes to God these are the right decisions.

The weeks stretch into months; time drawing out longer and longer between each visit. When Jacob hears of Anubis' plans for Earth, he prepares himself for Daniel's visit, prepares himself to give Sam up. The stakes are way too high.

But Daniel doesn't come.

Jacob's left to assume that three years were long enough to fill the holes left by Sam. They must have found someone else to conjure brilliant saves, to look upon the galaxy with wide-eyed wonder.

Jacob is torn between hating the idea that they may have forgotten her and breathing a sigh of relief. She's his alone this way. Silent. Damaged. But safe.

Jacob has freely dedicated his life to this fight against the Goa'uld. He can accept that they probably won't win, that even if they do, the Tok'ra won't long survive it. This he can live with.

But he won't sacrifice his daughter. Not what's left of her. Not again.

That's when he finally begins to understand Jack a little. To forgive him his weaknesses. It's hard not to when his own are so blatantly on display.

Jack is still fighting for them, whether they know it or not.

It matters.

* * *

It's not until two years after Earth's destruction that Daniel finally shows up to ask the question Jacob's been dreading.

"We need Sam," he says.

We, not I. Jacob knows Daniel isn't here for himself this time. It's almost worse.

"Where is she?" Daniel's eyes are shuttered, his build lean. He's become a hardened warrior somewhere in the intervening years. It chills Jacob to the bone.

"Cimmeria," Jacob says.

The old Daniel might have looked slightly chagrined by the obviousness of that location, maybe annoyed that he hadn't figured it out himself, but this new, tempered Daniel merely nods and heads back towards the Stargate.

Jacob thinks of his daughter, her swift hands and dead eyes.

"She may not be able to help you," Jacob warns Daniel's retreating back. It doesn't matter that she'll want to. Even Sam Carter has her limits. Limits are pretty much all that's left of her now.

He's not sure if Daniel hears him or not.

It doesn't really matter, Jacob decides.

They're only words.


	9. Prologue to Part 2

**Part Two: Prodigal**

**Prologue**

Anubis reserves a unique fate for Earth.

There's no specially engineered virus to run rampant through the population, no stolen Stargate to ensure no one escapes. Not like Chulak.

There's no poisoned atmosphere, no burned sky and boiling seas. Not like Hebridan.

There's no quick death from above, no grinding of the planet into nothing more than stellar dust. Not like Abydos.

Anubis has other ideas for Earth, for the rally point of rebellion, of hope.

He comes with his ships. A relatively small fleet, no more than seven, strategically positioned around the globe. Whether he doesn't fear Earth's pitiful weapons against his Ancient-enhanced defenses, or he just wants to ensure that the planet's last few hours are as chaotic as possible, Anubis maneuvers his ships down through the atmosphere, hovering like a black stain over the major continents.

The first target is Cheyenne Mountain.

The second is Washington, D.C.

Earth burns.

In the end, he levels the three hundred largest cities. Haphazard nuclear attacks from the ground bounce off his ships, decimating hundreds of more cities, raining death for thousands of square miles. Only then does the largest standing army in existence sweep through, clearing out any last pockets of resistance, enslaving all who survive.

Anubis breeds the Tau'ri for pets and slaves and experiments, makes them the backbone of his new Empire. Builds himself palaces and temples and sits upon a throne on the grave of the last great myth standing in his way.

This is how Earth dies.

By some miracle of intel or just Anubis' hubris, they know one month before that the end is coming. But it's not long enough to devise a solution, some last minute defense against the unbeatable ships. Those same ships that reduced the Asgard to nothing more than a few scattered individuals living in hiding, safe-guarding their knowledge and technology because that's the only thing they've ever understood.

The Asgard never really knew sacrifice and rising from the ashes, not the way the Tau'ri know them. With the end of their superiority, the Asgard are lost, drifting.

The Tau'ri, on the other hand, are used to being the underdog. They are too stubborn, too stupid to ever lie down.

For the month they await the inevitable, they build other worlds, establish new centers of rebellion, spread themselves across the galaxy like an infestation too insidious to be stamped out.

One day, they know they will return.

And Earth will live again.


	10. What Once Was Lost

**Chapter 1: What Once Was Lost**

It's been two years since Daniel last set foot on Earth. Two years since Anubis drove them into hiding like guerrilla revolutionaries. Five years since he watched Sam Carter walk through the gate with her father, part of him understanding even then that he might very well never see her again. But now it's only been five minutes since he turned his back on the building she calls home, since she slipped a few precious words into the pages of his journal, five minutes since he finally accepted that she was well and truly lost.

The Sam Carter he knew and respected never would have refused to help, no matter what.

Daniel walks away from her house, her prison, her self-imposed exile. His two companions fall into single file on either side of him out of habit, although Daniel suspects is has more to do with their wish for silence. Cam leads them down the hill, trying not to look like he's disappointed by Sam's refusal to rise to the occasion. Daniel walks behind him, matching his step to the Colonel's as Teal'c follows, sandwiching Daniel in the middle.

It doesn't help.

Sam's words pound in his mind in time to his steps and for the first time since this all began, Daniel begins to doubt this battle can be won. He begins to question what the hell they're still struggling for.

Maybe there is some great truth to be found in Sam's words, a mystery solved.

_Some things you just don't come back from._

Maybe they are fooling themselves that they can change anything. Anubis has already won.

They've reached the gate, and Daniel moves towards the DHD without giving the action much thought, punching in the glyphs for the Omega Site, but when the wormhole flushes into life, he knows he has no intention of going with them. Not right now. Not with these words still in his mind.

"You two go ahead," Daniel says as his companions move up the stairs. "I'm going back to see Jacob."

"Jackson," Cam complains, dropping back from the event horizon. "You know it makes me twitchy when you insist on running all over the galaxy on your lonesome."

Cam likes to think of them as a team rather than seeing himself as a babysitter set to the task of keeping his eclectic group of scientists and aliens from getting themselves killed. Mostly Daniel feels sorry for him. Cam doesn't know what a real team is.

"Wasn't really asking for your permission," Daniel says, leaning back against the DHD.

Cam looks ready to lay in to him, but holds his tongue when Teal'c puts a restraining hand on his arm.

"We will see you when you return," Teal'c says with a small nod before turning to step through the Stargate. Teal'c obviously gets that Daniel is one small push from complete meltdown and doesn't want to be near ground zero.

Left without any other choice, Cam shoots Daniel one last look as if to convey how displeased he is, before stepping into the wormhole.

Daniel blows out a breath as the wormhole disengages and lowers himself to the steps. For a moment, he considers walking back up the mountain.

_Some things you just don't come back from._

"Did you find what you came for?" someone asks.

Daniel looks up in alarm, recognizing exactly how alone and exposed he is here, but the speaker is only Gairwyn. Looking at her, he doesn't feel the warm familiarity she once might have evoked. It still feels like she somehow kidnapped Sam from them.

"You should have told us she was here," he says.

She tilts her head to one side, and he has the annoying feeling of being analyzed, x-rayed by her clear gaze. "That was never my decision to make," she answers, calm and obviously comfortable with her choices.

Daniel knows it would be easy to shatter that certainty. Just a few simple words. In his anger, he actually considers doing it for a moment, considers telling her that Thor is dead. That Anubis captured him and drained every secret from the Asgard's formidable brain before killing him, scattering his consciousness like background noise in the vacuum of space so that no new body could ever contain it. That the majority of the Asgard died in a similar fashion.

Daniel looks into Gariwyn's clear, faithful eyes and wants to destroy her. It may even be a kindness in the long run, to prepare her for what is coming. But he thinks of Sam, thinks of her tidy house and frozen tongue and can't do it. He can't shatter her perfect world.

"It is good that you came," Gairwyn says when Daniel remains silent. "You will see."

The words have the cadence of prophecy, the slight vibration of things to come. Once, Daniel might have been willing to believe.

"May the gods travel with you," she says before turning her back on him and slipping back up the forest path. Only there are no more gods to walk with.

Pushing to his feet, Daniel dials the latest Tok'ra world, needing to speak to Jacob, needing to see it clear on his face that Sam really is lost.

That it really is all over.

* * *

There's a slight buzz of activity in the Tok'ra halls when Daniel arrives, which is fairly unusual. The Tok'ra are a lot like the Asgard these days, a race with one foot already in the grave. A fate like that lends a certain amount of listlessness to a people. Daniel remembers that first hand.

He'd passed a tel'tac in the sands near the gate when he arrived, so he assumes this is the source of the current surge in energy. One of their agents must have returned, maybe with some big new piece of intel.

Daniel couldn't care less.

He finds Jacob in his quarters, in the midst of packing a crate with what looks like fabric.

"Daniel," Jacob says when he catches sight of him, sounding surprised and slightly alarmed. "I wasn't expecting you back." His eyes dart past Daniel's shoulder.

Daniel follows the movement, finding nothing behind him but an empty hallway. He's more interested in Jacob at the moment, anyway. Like the rest of the Tok'ra, he seems wound a bit tight.

"Is everything okay?" Jacob asks.

"You were right," Daniel says, watching his face closely. "She wouldn't help."

Jacob nods his head. "Yeah. I'm sorry, Daniel," he says. Only he's not. Daniel can tell. It's right there to see in plain sight, Jacob's relief in the reaffirmation of Sam's uselessness. Her insignificance. Her safety.

"You tried to warn me," Daniel says through clenched teeth.

Jacob shifts. "Is there anything I can I do to help?" At least he has the decency to sound guilty. That's more than Gairwyn offered.

"We still need to get our hands on more weapons to fill in the ground troops," Daniel says, arbitrarily picking one of many, many things on his mental 'To-Do' list, because something still isn't quite right and he can't put his finger on it yet.

Jacob is distracted, looking up over Daniel's shoulder again, staring at something behind him in a sort of surprise bordering on horror.

"I might be able to help you with that," a voice says.

Daniel freezes, his eyes latched onto Jacob's horrified face. That can't possibly be who it sounds like. Jacob's eyes drop away, more guilt, and Daniel has his answer.

Turning slowly, Daniel finds himself face to face with Jack O'Neill.

He's leaner, much lankier than the man Daniel remembers, his unkempt hair completely grey now. But most out of place of all is the dark tattoo curling around his neck, spreading out like inky fingers from his spine, disappearing under his collar.

The first thing Daniel does is punch him in the face.

Either Jack has lost his edge or he's purposively taking the hit. He sprawls on his ass, looks up at Daniel, and says, "Well, your left hook has certainly improved."

Daniel wants to hit him again.

Jacob intercedes, stepping between them to press one hand against Daniel's chest and offer the other to Jack.

"You're supposed to be dead," Daniel says, watching Jacob pull Jack to his feet. "All this damn time. You told us he was dead."

"I told you Anhur was dead," Jacob corrects.

And now they're playing with damn semantics. Daniel swears under his breath, moving a few steps away. God, of all days for this to happen. He was already way at the end of his rope, barely clinging to it for months. He rubs at his forehead in agitation.

"How?" he snaps, falling back on collecting information in a vague attempt not to lose it completely.

"Thor's Hammer," Jacob replies without hesitation, maybe trying to demonstrate his willingness to fess up. As if it makes any difference. But then Jacob's words actually penetrate and Daniel halts mid-step. Thor's Hammer. Cimmeria.

"Sam," Daniel says, turning to Jack. "She saved you."

Jack laughs, low and hard and somehow completely devoid of humor. "Do I look saved to you, Daniel?"

"You look alive." That's more than most people from Earth can say these days.

Jack's lips twist into a smirk, but his eyes are completely flat. "Looks can be deceiving," he says.

What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

Daniel only realizes he's said it out loud when Jacob puts a hand on his arm. "Daniel," he warns, as if he's stepped over some boundary. As far as Daniel's concerned though, he's the only sane person left in this room.

Daniel tries to shrug off the restraining hand, but Jacob just digs his fingers in, his grip like an iron band as he shoves Daniel out of the room. "I get it, Daniel," he says when they are safely out in the hall. "I really do. But you don't have the whole picture here."

Daniel shakes off Jacob's hand again and this time he lets him go. "Oh, I think I see perfectly clearly, thanks," Daniel says, pacing away from the doorway.

"Daniel, use your damn head. Where do you think all that intel we gave you _really_ came from? You think the Tok'ra, the handful of us that are left, have been focused on Earth?"

This actually penetrates the blinding anger that's been building in Daniel all day. "What are you saying?"

Jacob hooks a thumb over his shoulder. "Who exactly do you think discovered Anubis' plans for Earth?"

Daniel is stunned. "But…"

"Jack has never stopped busting his ass for Earth, not for even a moment," Jacob says. "Maybe not the way you wanted, but he did it the only way he could. So give him a break."

"I can't _believe_ this," Daniel says, pacing across the width of the hall. His hands are still shaking with adrenaline, his knuckles throbbing from their collision with Jack's face. A reminder that of all the things Jack might be, at least he's real. And alive.

"He was a Goa'uld, Daniel." Jacob sighs, rubbing his head with his hand. "Maybe you think you have some tiny understanding of what that means, but I guarantee it's even worse than you've imagined. He's had to live with that."

"Gee, Jacob, I wonder what it's like to have to live with shitty things done to you by the Goa'uld."

"Daniel," Jacob says, shaking his head.

Daniel doesn't really need to have it pointed out how irrational and petulant he's being. Kicking at the wall, he leans against it with a sigh, his anger leaking away to an equally bone deep weariness. Being pissed off is exhausting. "I just don't understand why he couldn't come back."

Jacob nods then, reaching out to clap a hand on Daniel's shoulder. "It's hard to help someone who doesn't want to be helped. Or who doesn't think there's any point."

Something in Jacob's voice doesn't settle right with Daniel. "Wait. What aren't you telling me?"

"You'll work it out soon enough," he says in that annoyingly superior voice he's obviously picked up from the Tok'ra over the years.

"Jacob, cut the crap."

This brings a ghost of a smile to Jacob's face.

"What?" Daniel demands.

Jacob shakes his head then, obviously finding something amusing. "Considering you haven't seen him in five years, you sound an awful lot like him."

But Daniel doesn't want to think about how channeling Jack is sometimes the only way he gets through all the horror being thrown at him daily. Doesn't want to admit that part of him is incredibly relieved to know Jack's still alive, that he might be on their side once more.

Because none of that negates the fact that he is pissed and plans on staying that way.

"Just tell me," Daniel says.

Jacob winces, scratching the back of his head. "It's possible he's not…completely all there, if you know what I mean. But then again, who is these days?"

Daniel holds up his hands. "Wait. Are you trying say that he's, what, _insane_?"

Jacob just shrugs. His cavalier treatment of Jack's dubious mental health is startling. But Jack doesn't command his only daughter anymore, so maybe he's allowed to not be overly concerned. She's nice and safe on her pleasant world. Lucky Jacob.

"Do you trust him?" Daniel asks.

"He's still Jack O'Neill. Just a little less sane."

Daniel doesn't find that particularly comforting.

"Look, Daniel," Jacob says. "The bottom line here is that you need help and he's in a position to offer it. We can worry about grudges later, if any of us are still alive."

Great. Something to look forward to.

Taking a deep breath, Daniel forces himself to walk back into the room, to look Jack O'Neill in the eye and say, "Do you really think you can help us?"

Jack shrugs and for a moment, despite the strange clothes and dead eyes and possible insanity, he feels familiar. "I'm willing to try," he says.

That's something at least, right?

_Some things you just don't come back from_.

Maybe Sam is allowed to be wrong. Or maybe the point is that there isn't any going back, recovering what was. But that doesn't mean they can't still stumble forward, find a new direction. They have to try. Don't they?

Daniel nods at Jack. "I'll take you to see Reynolds."


	11. Omega

**Chapter Two-Omega**

"So what was that?" Cam demands moments after materializing on the other side of the wormhole. God, he still remembers when he used to keep count of each and every time he went through a Stargate, back when it was an event worth recording. These days he's too busy trying to keep his team from self-destructing to bother.

Teal'c gives no sign he's heard the question, taking off in the direction of a small copse of trees. Great, now Cam can't even get the one team member he's got left to listen to him. Cam peers up into the clear blue sky, catching a glimpse of one of the three moons in ascension. There was also a time he would have found living on an alien moon pretty amazing too. Jogging down the last few steps, he takes a sharp right, following after Teal'c.

Pushing past the first screen of trees, Cam's eyes take a moment to adjust to the shadows. Teal'c waits by a low stone fragment, little more than the base of a marble column, almost completely obscured by undergrowth.

"I did not wish to be present for Daniel Jackson's inevitable loss of temper," Teal'c says, opening a panel on the side of the stone.

It takes Cam a moment to realize this is meant as an answer to his original question. "Well, sure," he says. "No one wants to be around a grumpy Jackson, but should we really have let him run off alone?"

Teal'c still looks supremely unconcerned in a way only he can. "He is with Jacob Carter. There is no reason to be apprehensive about his safety."

Hard to argue with that kind of certainty, but then again, Cam's always been a bit of a masochist. He wouldn't be the leader of SG-1 if he weren't. After all, his team scientist is glued to the labs so tight that he doubts the guy could be pried away with a trinium crowbar and the promise of a fully functioning Asgard ship. Now Daniel is off on walkabout while he has a temper tantrum. And Teal'c? Hell, Cam gave up trying to order him around five minutes after they first met.

Teal'c nods at the controls, kneeling down to key in their code. Cam sighs, reaches out, and touches the stone. The two of them are enveloped in white light; the forest disappears to be replaced by heavy metal walls arcing above them.

"Don't you think it's mean to stick Jacob with Daniel?" Cam asks as green beams sweep out of the chamber walls and scan over them.

Teal'c looks at him, a small smile curling his lips in a way that Cam always finds frighteningly feral. "Perhaps," he concedes.

"All clear," a voice announces. The green beams shut off, and on the far side of the chamber, a panel peels back, revealing a door.

"So who you betting on, Daniel or Selmak?" Cam asks.

Teal'c walks out of the room ahead of him, not bothering to acknowledge the quip. Sure as hell never stops Cam from trying.

Out in the hall, one of the younger grease monkeys waits with a jeep to convey them down to command. End of the world, apocalyptic doom on the horizon or not, Cam still thinks it's beyond bizarre to be whizzing down a Tok'ra-styled tunnel in a good ole American jeep. Then again, weird is pretty much the norm these days.

As if proof of that, Teal'c sits in the backseat clutching the quilt he'd brought out of the house on Cimmeria. Cam hadn't thought to ask where it came from, though he imagines Sam Carter must have something to do with it, as counterintuitive as that seems. Sam Carter and quilts? But he'd also thought she would help them, so obviously reading about her in mission reports wasn't enough to get a clear picture.

McKay and Reynolds are waiting for them when the Jeep pulls to a stop outside of command.

"Where's Sam?" McKay demands before they've even had a chance to climb out of the vehicle. "Isn't she with you?"

Cam looks up over McKay's shoulder to Reynolds, shaking his head in answer to the question. There's a flash of disappointment on Reynolds' face before he nods resignedly. They all knew it had been a long shot.

"And Daniel?" Reynolds asks.

Cam takes a deep breath. "Went to talk with Jacob," he says, trying not to sound like he's having a hard time keeping Daniel in line, but he thinks Reynolds sees it anyway.

"What is that?" McKay blurts then, jabbing a finger at the bundle in Teal'c's arms.

"It is a quilt," Teal'c replies, but McKay is apparently completely oblivious to the frosty warning in his voice.

"No, not the quilt. What's on it!" He tugs at it, twisting his head as if trying to view it right side up and failing spectacularly. He glances up at Teal'c with an equal mix of irritation and fear. "Um. Please?"

Teal'c looks over at Reynolds. Receiving a nod, Teal'c rather reluctantly lets McKay have it. "You will take great care," Teal'c informs McKay as they all follow him into command.

It's a redundant request, as McKay is already almost reverently spreading it across an open table, his fingers running over the stitches like reading Braille. Then he starts mumbling to himself, his eyes widening moment by moment.

"You want us to leave you two alone?" Cam asks, beginning to feel like he is watching something indecently personal.

"Where exactly did you get this?" McKay demands. Even after all these years, Cam still wonders if McKay is too dense to be scared of Teal'c or if he really somehow feels that comfortable with the warrior. As Teal'c has not seriously maimed McKay yet, Cam supposes it could be the latter.

"It was given to me by Major Carter," Teal'c says.

"What? Really?" McKay turns back to the quilt, looking, if possible, even more eager. "I need to study this."

"Why?" Reynolds asks. "What is it?"

"These are equations," McKay says, his hands spreading wide across the fabric. "And some sort of schematic."

"For what?"

McKay pauses, tilting his head to one side. "I have no idea."

Behold, SG-1, Cam's crack team of experts, the finest Earth has to offer. Or _had_ to offer, rather. He must have sighed audibly because McKay shoots him a look, poking one finger in the air. "Yet," he amends.

"And the drone weapon?" Reynolds asks.

McKay waves a hand dismissively, already leaning back over the quilt. "Practically done. Just a few tweaks here and there."

Reynolds crosses his arms, his voice hardening. "I shouldn't have to remind you that the weapon is your top priority."

"I _know_," McKay says. "But we asked Sam for help and she gave us this. Don't you think that means something?"

"Weapon first, mystery equations second," Reynolds says. "You hear me, McKay?"

McKay sighs. "Yeah, I hear you."

"Good," Reynolds says. He sends one last glance at the quilt, and Cam still thinks he looks disappointed. Then again, Reynolds has had the weight of the entire galaxy on his shoulders for two years now. Cam doesn't envy him that.

Maybe he'd hoped to have Sam Carter back for another reason all together. It must be lonely at the top.

Reynolds disappears back into his office, leaving Cam, Teal'c, and McKay standing around the table staring at Sam Carter's handiwork.

"There's one thing I don't understand," McKay says. Looking down at the quilt, his brow creases. "Why did she stitch this into a quilt?"

Yeah, weird sure has become a relative thing since Cam came to Omega.

* * *

Cam and Teal'c are in the commissary enjoying ('enjoy' is another thing that has become rather relative) a fine meal of local road kill stew when Reynolds tracks them down a few hours later. "You two. With me," he says, not even pausing to see if they follow.

Cam glances at Teal'c and pushes out of his chair, hurrying after his commander. "What's going on, sir?"

Reynolds looks about as agitated as Cam has ever seen him, which is saying something. Cam has been with Reynolds for some awfully terrible days these last few years. "Daniel's back," he says. "And he's not alone."

It's exceedingly rare for anyone to bring an outsider to the Omega site. Their location is the single most heavily guarded secret they have left. The Alpha, the Beta, all their traditional sites, the hubs through which all travel traditionally passed, had been the first sites rooted out and destroyed by Anubis. Omega is the only purely military installation they have left. It's the place they safeguard technologies, house their fleet of ships. It's the location they brought Idun, one of the very last Asgard, one actually willing to impart his knowledge to the Tau'ri. Everything depends on this site. If Anubis somehow finds Omega, it will mean the end of the resistance. The end of the war.

"It's not just Jacob?" Cam asks.

Reynolds' jaw tightens. "No."

He doesn't seem inclined to say anything more, so Cam just jumps into the backseat of the jeep. As they near the quarantine chamber, he notices that the doors are still closed, two armed marines standing on either side. Standard conditions when an arrival doesn't get the all clear.

Reynolds climbs out of the jeep nodding to the marines. Toggling his radio, he says, "You are clear to open the doors."

The doors slide open to reveal Jackson, looking calmer than Cam's seen him in months. And then a second man steps out from behind him.

"Colonel O'Neill," Reynolds says.

Cam's mouth actually drops open in astonishment, but in his defense, the guy is supposed to be long dead. A long dead, larger than life hero, from what he's heard and read.

O'Neill's lips twitch in what Cam might have called a grin, but there seemed nothing humorous about it. "It's pretty much just 'Jack' these days."

The guy's looking rough around the edges, wearing a worn set of brown leather pants and a heavy canvas jacket that seems designed to hide as large a personal arsenal as possible. Under the dark scruff on his jaw is a newly blossoming bruise. He's slouched, seemingly at ease, but Cam doesn't mistake the aura of alertness and capability under that. Cam suspects this is the sort of man people only underestimate once, and usually to their detriment.

There isn't much Air Force left in him at first glance and poor Reynolds looks torn between wanting to salute the guy and have him detained for questioning.

O'Neill eyes the armed guards. "Feel free to stick me in a machine or scan me or whatever, if it will make you feel better," he offers with a shrug.

"We already did," Jackson says, hooking a thumb back towards the metal chamber they've just left.

O'Neill's eyebrows lift. "The green beam thingies?" he asks. "Huh. Impressive." He shifts then, turning at last to regard Teal'c. "Teal'c," he says with a nod.

Cam glances at Teal'c to gauge his reaction to the reincarnation of his old friend, but the Jaffa's face is as unreadable as Cam has ever seen. He seems to spend an inordinately long time looking O'Neill over though. Daniel watches the two of them, some sort of frisson in the air, with Cam and Reynolds left standing just outside.

Teal'c eventually inclines his head politely as if he's just been introduced to a stranger. "O'Neill," he says in a tone that can only be described as bland, but something running just underneath makes Cam's blood run cold. Somehow it might have been better if he'd yelled or pulled a staff weapon.

"You're Jacob's secret source," Reynolds says and it takes Cam a moment to make the connection.

Holy shit. All this damn time, they've had Jack O'Neill pulling for them from behind the scenes.

O'Neill neither denies nor confirms the supposition, just reaches out to poke the crystal wall with interest. "Looks like you have quite the operation going here."

Reynolds takes a step closer to O'Neill, looking him over like he's searching for something. Maybe for some last vestige of the man he'd known. "We've recruited from every culture or group that demonstrates even the slightest chance of helping with the rebellion against Anubis. Tok'ra, Jaffa, Asgard, Hebridian, Langaran, Vitreans. You name them, we've got them."

O'Neill crosses his arms over his chest, something flinty and incredibly intelligent flashing in his eyes. "Except the Lucian Alliance," he says.

Reynolds nods. "Except the Lucian Alliance."

O'Neill's lips press into a thin line as if considering something particularly unpleasant. "I may have a contact," he says grudgingly.

Reynolds lips curl into a smile of feral satisfaction. "I was hoping you'd say that."

Cam wonders if it strikes anyone else as oddly coincidental that O'Neill's ghost is reappearing just at the exact moment they need him most, but if there is one thing he's learned since joining the Stargate program, it's that as awful as things can get, there's just always been something strangely charmed about the Tau'ri. There has to be for them to have survived this long, right?

So to Cam, Jack O'Neill's sudden reincarnation can only mean one thing.

They are going to win this fight.


	12. Compatriots

**Chapter 3-Compatriots**

There's a lot more waiting around in the life of a spy and smuggler than Jack expected at first. He's had years to get used to it though. He's learned to appreciate stillness.

Daniel, on the other hand, is wound tight, seemingly convinced this is a fool's errand, that maybe Jack is just yanking his chain. Jack can feel his impatience building and building as they spend three days cooling their heels in seedy tavern after seedy tavern. It's familiar somehow, but this isn't really the Daniel he remembers.

There isn't a quicker way to do this though. It's not like there's a smuggler's message board, or cell phones. Sure, they have subspace transmissions, but more often than not people in Jack's line of work are running silent. You want to find someone? The best way is to stalk them in their haunts.

This particular town is one of his contact's favorites: bustling, rough, and free of any concerned citizenry that might take offense at the unseemly sides of their business. Occasional violence inevitably happens when you're trading in secrets and armaments and moonshine. There's always that one person doing something stupid like trying to short change someone or double cross a partner, or at least stupid enough to get _caught_ doing it. So, yeah, sometimes there's violence.

Damaging public property or disturbing the peace never really gets you more than a dousing in the public well here. No, it's the person you're making a deal with that you need to watch most closely, not the local peacekeepers. If someone's going to stick a knife in your back, it's not going to be the lazy, fat cat of a sheriff. Which is probably why Jack's contact prefers this place. She's not big on authority figures, at least ones that can't be bribed. Either that or she just likes the sweet shop on the edge of town that makes amazing pull taffy. Like with most things with Vala Mal Doran, he's never been quite clear which it is.

Jack first met her six months before Earth died. (That event is his compass point now, no longer breaking everything into before and after the snake, recognizing that the galactic implications of the end of Earth are far greater than Anhur ever hoped to be. The dead snake haunting his mind doesn't really matter, even if that pisses the parasite off. Jack finds amusement where he can.)

On that particular job almost three years ago, he'd spent the entire time considering shooting Vala when she wasn't looking and she'd ended up giving him a black eye. Basically a match made in Netu, but against all odds, it works. Somehow. He's less suspicious of the counterintuitive these days. It's the things that make sense that always come back to bite him in the ass.

And Vala Mal Doran is anything but logical.

They aren't really friends. It's more and yet so much less.

"_Who was your snake?" he asks, surprising himself as much as her._

_Her eyes narrow, her mood shifting dangerously. It's a bit of a betrayal to speak of it, defying the implicit agreement they made the first time they sat across a table from each other, eyes wide with the mutual sensation crawling up their spines. Kindred spirits maybe, but that doesn't mean they have anything in common. Or that they ever want to talk about it._

"_How long?" he asks when she doesn't answer the first question._

_She looks like she'd happily shoot him if she didn't need him. And maybe even then if it wouldn't give away their position._

_For some reason, he can't let this go, not today. "How long?"_

"_Long enough," she snaps._

_That tells him everything and nothing. But he has to know. "Does it ever still…interfere?"_

"_What?" She's looking at him like he's crazy, but he's used to that by now. After all, he is._

"_You know, up here?" he says, tapping his temple._

_There's a tiny moment when she pales, her shields falling, painful understanding in her eyes, and Jack feels his heart give an erratic beat. Turning away from him, she checks her gun, the topic seemingly dropped. But then, he hears her say, "Only if I let it."_

_By the time they make it out with the goods, her shields are firmly back in place, and she's running her hand up his thigh, offering to sweeten the deal as they sip at their victory drinks. _

_It's her way. He can respect that. But he never takes her up on it. _

_It takes him a while to realize it's just a test. She doesn't want it any more than he does, so he has to wonder what brand of sick games her own snake played._

_He still leers at her though, calls her sweetheart as he counts out his share under her watchful eye. Like usual, she rips him off a little, but it's a small price to pay for her comfort, for her endless need to feel like she always comes out slightly on top._

_Everyone copes in their own way._

_As for Jack, he knows what he saw that moment when all the lies and posturing fell away. He remembers. Remembers and wants to believe._

'_Only if I let it.'_

_

* * *

_

Jack and Daniel are walking down the main drag when Vala finally makes her entrance.

"Jack," she exclaims, appearing out of the crowd and taking a running leap at him. Jack bites back a groan as he almost stumbles under her unexpected weight, knowing that she'll happily take umbrage at his uncouth insinuation that she's heavy if he lets it show. That's usually worth at least an extra five percent.

Equilibrium regained and legs wrapped securely around his waist, she grins down at him. "Hi."

"Hey, sweetheart," Jack says. "Still alive, I see."

"Of course," she says, head tilting to one side. "And you? Still crazy, I hope."

"As always," he replies.

Flicking her hair over her shoulder, she winks at him. "So, is this a business call, or have you finally decided you just can't live without me?"

"Jack," Daniel hisses from behind him. Frankly, Daniel has kept his silence for twice as long as Jack expected. "As much fun as this is to watch…," Daniel drawls, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

Jack isn't sure what he's done to piss Daniel off again already, but he doesn't really care either. "Daniel," he says, easing Vala back down to her feet. "This is Vala Mal Doran."

Vala looks wary now, her growing alarm firmly hidden under a fake, bright smile that most men are too dumb to see past. He can't quite tell if Daniel is falling for it or not.

"He's looking for some armaments," Jack says. "I told him you were the one to see."

"You're Tau'ri?" she guesses, looking Daniel over.

"Yes," Daniel says.

There's the briefest flash of a pause Jack recognizes as Vala working out her variables, stacking risk against reward. "Well," she says, her hand sliding into the crook of Daniel's arm, "buy me a drink, handsome, and I'll see what I can do."

Jack grabs her other hand, the one moving freely while the first distracts. "And no robbing him blind either, sweetheart."

Daniel pulls her hand away from his arm, letting out an aggravated sigh. "Can we just get this done?" he asks, pacing ahead of them towards the nearest tavern.

Vala slides Jack a sharp glare as they follow behind. "You sure know how to ruin a girl's fun," she pouts.

Jack smirks. "That's what they're always telling me."

* * *

Jack rolls his glass between his palms, his eyes making another circuit around the crowded room, automatically searching for familiar faces, friendly or otherwise, and picking out any suspicious behavior, anything that might trigger the need for quick escape. It's second nature now to be this paranoid, a mutation of his training. The enemy rarely shows up in easily spotted uniforms or clunking armor anymore.

Daniel and Vala are doing the majority of the talking, a rapid back and forth that Jack isn't paying much attention to. He's not really here to broker the deal for them. He'll make sure Vala doesn't rip Daniel off, but other than that, Jack is pretty much flying second seat.

He has bigger issues on his mind.

Jack has to admit that watching Vala and Daniel dance around each other is one of the most amusing things he's seen in years. There was a time a woman as forthright and, how can he put it, _vulgar_ as Vala would have had Daniel stammering and clueless. This new Daniel gives as much as he gets, parrying each suggestive purr with hard-edged sarcasm, not allowing her an inch of rope to hang him with. And rather than being defeated or annoyed, Vala seems enlivened by it, something gleaming in her eye that he's rarely had occasion to see.

She's still suspicious though, and isn't letting herself be completely distracted by her fun new playmate. She's too good at her job for that. Every few minutes her eyes dart to Jack where he silently sips his ale. She's waiting for the other shoe to drop, can feel it already, he imagines. He lets her stew.

It takes them thirty minutes to iron out the particulars, only about twice as long as it probably should have. Jack drops some currency on the table and follows the still bickering pair back out into the street.

"Well," Vala is saying, flashing her blinding smile, the one she uses to seal deals. "I think this will be a very lucrative arrangement on both sides."

"There's one more thing," Jack says, pausing on the sidewalk.

She tenses, the bright smile slipping.

"They need a meeting with Netan."

Jack barely catches the fury on Vala's face before her fist connects with his jaw.

It's a jab more than anything, but he still stumbles a bit. He knows if she really wanted to do damage, he'd be on the ground bleeding. He rubs at the sore spot, trying to ignore the snicker coming from Daniel's direction. People are getting way too much of a kick out of hitting him these days.

"You done?" he asks, peering at Vala.

"You're stepping over the damn line here, O'Neill," she hisses, just as pissed off as he knew she would be. He's putting her at huge risk, asking her to take sides. Taking sides is usually the quickest way to end up dead. Or worse: powerless.

"Will you excuse us a moment?" Jack says to Daniel, grabbing Vala's arm and forcibly steering her a short distance away. "Okay, I let you take a shot at me so now you have to listen to what I have to say."

She tries to tug her arm away, but Jack just digs his fingers in harder. "I thought you'd realize by now that no one out here gives a damn about the Tau'ri," she spits.

"This isn't about Earth," he says.

"Bullshit."

Jack sighs, dropping her arm. "Fine. So it is about Earth. But what the hell do you care as long as it's also about getting rid of Anubis? I never took you for someone who gave a shit about intentions. Only results."

"What do I care about Anubis?" she says, crossing her arms over her chest. "He happens to be good for business."

Anubis' slaughter of the system lords has certainly opened up a power vacuum in large areas of space. The underground couldn't flourish, let alone exist, without it. But Jack isn't stupid enough to think that's going to work in their favor permanently.

"Maybe," Jack concedes. "But how long will that last, really? You think he's just going to look the other way while we continue our business affairs? He won't be happy until every last corner of this galaxy has been ground under his heel. Until anyone and anything that might be able to stand up to him is gone."

Vala scoffs. "I've heard that before. From dozens of Goa'uld. They've had their chance for thousands and thousands of years. None of them ever pulled it off. And you and I know better than anyone how weak they are."

"We also both know there is something different about Anubis." Even Anhur, as useless as he is, is enough to confirm this.

Vala looks like she wants to deny it, but Jack stares her down, daring her to bullshit him. She grimaces, her eyes drop away, reluctantly conceding the point. "Fine," she bites out, "but what makes you think the Tau'ri, of all people, have even the slightest chance of pulling this off?"

Jack glances back at Daniel. He seems to remember there was a time they believed in miracles, damn the odds. Is this really any different?

"Because they have to," he says.

"Don't feed me that sentimental drivel," she blusters, but the sharpness is gone from her voice. Jack's one of the few people who can see it, but he knows Vala is no way near as cynical as she pretends.

And the Tau'ri are exactly the sort of lost-cause misfits she can relate to if she can get out from behind her nearly impenetrable shield of self-preservation long enough to see that. It's kept her alive this long, but there's a time and place for throwing all caution to the wind and diving in.

This may just be that moment.

Jack smirks at her. "Just think, once Anubis is gone, there won't be any Goa'uld left to take his place. Nothing but chaos and plenty of opportunities for free enterprise."

She rolls her eyes at him. They both know the vague possibility of future profits is nowhere near worth it. If she, or the Lucian Alliance, throws their lot in with them and they lose, Anubis will no longer ignore them. He'll slaughter them.

When she doesn't take another swing at him for even suggesting it, he knows she's actually considering it.

"Damn you, Jack O'Neill," she says as she turns away. "Damn you for making me want to believe."

Jack's pretty sure that's supposed to be his line.


	13. A Song for Our Fathers

**Chapter Four: A Song for Our Fathers**

Daniel watches Jack and Vala where they're standing a few paces away, just far enough that he can't hear what they're saying. They're leaning into each other with the obvious ease of two people who know each other well. Of course, Vala also looks pissed enough to pull her gun on Jack.

Daniel can relate to that.

Someone bumps into Daniel from behind, and, as Daniel turn to look at him, the half-muttered curse dies in the stranger's throat. He stops talking mid-word and quickly ducks back into the flow of people on the sidewalk. There was a time such behavior might have seemed strange, but Daniel is getting used to it.

He doesn't miss the way people give him space, the bustle of the street diverting around him like he's a stone in a river. He's resigned to the looks he gets from people when they realize he's Tau'ri. He's one part pariah, one part legend. And everyone treats him as if his people are already in the past tense, like he's a walking ghost.

Like he's cursed.

"Okay, handsome," Vala says, appearing without warning by his elbow. "Give me three days and twenty weights of naquadah and we've got ourselves a deal."

"Five up front," Jack interrupts, right on her heels. He hands over their payment. "The balance when you deliver."

Vala's lips press together, but eventually she nods, taking the case, hefting it as if to judge the weight. Then she focuses her attention back on Daniel and gives him a lop-sided grin, her fingers dancing a pattern across his chest. "I'll be in touch," she promises with a sly wink.

She's gone before he can think of a suitable response. He watches her as she disappears back into the crowd. "So this is what you've been doing all these years?" he asks Jack.

Jack slides him a look. "I'm not sleeping with her, if that's what's got your panties in a twist."

Daniel glances up at him sharply.

Jack's eyes narrow. "You don't have any right to tell me how to live my damn life, Daniel," he snaps, walking off.

"That's abundantly clear," Daniel says to his back. With a sigh, he follows Jack into the general store across the street. Jack is already talking with the storekeep when he catches up. Daniel is pretty sure that the crate on the counter next to them is the one he saw Jacob packing a few days before.

Daniel listens to Jack run through a large list of supplies. The pile on the counter grows quickly, full of staples like flour and cured meats, but also household items such as lamp oil that he can't imagine Jack needs unless he's got another cabin stashed away on a planet somewhere.

"Thread?" Daniel asks as the storekeep adds a few spools of various colors.

Jack ignores him. "You get any of those preserves from Nash? The nettleberry?"

The storekeep nods, a wide smile barely visible under his heavy beard. "Just came in last week. Got a few jars left."

"Great," Jack says. "I'll take one jar of the preserves and that will do it."

"Okay," the storekeep says, marking something down in a ledger. He pats the crate. "I'll get these to Laura."

Jack quickly packs two boxes full of supplies, unceremoniously dumping one into Daniel's arms, taking the slightly smaller one himself. "See you next month, Cyrus," Jack says over his shoulder as he trudges back out into the street.

Daniel shifts his load and decides against asking questions Jack clearly has no interest in answering. At least until they hit the outskirts of town where Jack's ship waits for them. Truthfully, it isn't much to look at, but Jack has obviously taken a lot of time to optimize it because there are systems and modifications that Daniel's never seen before, not that he pays much attention to that kind of thing. If he hadn't seen Jack buried in various systems on the way out here, he might not have noticed that among Jack's many new skill sets, grease monkey seems chief among them.

Following Jack into the ship's hold, Daniel watches him put the boxes into another larger crate partially full of fabric, and now he gets it. It shouldn't be a surprise that Jack has been taking care of her this whole time, but somehow it makes a difference knowing that Jack O'Neill isn't so changed that he leaves his people behind.

Glancing around the hold, for the first time Daniel _really_ looks at the space Jack calls home these days. The majority of the space is designated for cargo, so Daniel hasn't spent much time here. Other than the flight out to this planet, they've been staying in a boarding house in town while they waited for Vala to show up.

His eye is caught by the small alcove at the rear, partially covered by a thin curtain. Daniel can just make out a narrow trunk bed with a pile of what might be star charts and a few worn paperbacks near the foot. The sparse belongings paint a painfully bleak picture of a Spartan existence. Whatever the truth is of what Jack O'Neill has been doing the last five years, it certainly hasn't been comfortable, or easy, and Daniel just can't stay angry, no matter how much he wants to.

Turning back to the crate, Daniel finds Jack watching him, as if daring him to comment, or maybe simply waiting for the next fight.

"Why come back now?" Daniel asks, not a critique or a heated complaint, just a simple question. Probably the most important question.

Jack seems surprised, but doesn't pretend not to understand the question. He just looks down at the crate as if considering his answer. Eventually he shrugs. "Because it looks to me like this is it," he says. "Am I wrong?"

Daniel shakes his head. He's not wrong.

"I heard about Abydos," Jack says after a lengthy silence.

Daniel flinches. He manages to forget, sometimes. Letting his mind fool him that it's still waiting out there for him somewhere. That he hadn't led them to their deaths.

"I'm sorry," Jack says, still looking down at his hands so he doesn't see something he's not supposed to.

It's such a familiar ruse that Daniel feels a horrid sort of deja vu, time wrapping around on itself. Maybe Jacob's right. He's still Jack O'Neill. And maybe none of them were really sane to begin with. There was a time they'd been deluded enough to think they could win this, after all, wasn't there?

"I worry about Teal'c," Daniel confesses before he can give it too much thought.

Now Jack turns, confusion on his face. Another thing that hasn't changed: they always assume nothing can touch Teal'c. Except maybe Sam, he thinks, remembering her fingers on Teal'c's face, the way Teal'c stepped away from her. He thinks Sam saw it. Recognized what no one else could.

"I think he's beginning to regret this."

Teal'c should have been pissed at Jack for deserting, or shown at least _something_ other than sheer indifference. They both know that.

"Ry'ac?" Jack asks, his voice a shade lower than normal. Daniel wonders if that's guilt weighing his tongue down. God knows there's more than enough to go around these days.

Daniel nods. "And Bra'tac. And Chulak. Imhotep's betrayal of the rebels. I don't know when it began really."

Jack crosses his arms, leaning one hip against the crate. "Is it as bad as they say?"

"Bad enough," Daniel admits.

The Jaffa rebellion was supposed to be the cornerstone of the Goa'uld's destruction. But Anubis foresaw the threat they could become. He snuck in a minor compatriot as a mole, a lure he used to stamp out as many renegades at one time as he could. Then he stepped up his production of mindless drones with only one directive: to serve Anubis.

The last of his loyal Jaffa he threw into bloody, pointless battles.

Anubis is steadily driving the Jaffa towards extinction.

But the Goa'uld's dependence on the drones may be their one chance to find his damn Achilles' heel.

Rodney is back at base right now, working on it. It's the first tiny glimmer or hope Daniel's seen in years. It's what finally drove him to try to bring Sam back. The final pull, the last bet, all chips thrown in.

"All or nothing," Daniel mutters.

Jack nods.

* * *

The grove is quiet, none of the women are training this late in the day, but rather attending to chores in their camp. The sun has not yet begun its decent behind the mountains so beats down upon Teal'c as he moves through his routine with his staff, the movements proscribed and imprinted on his brain since childhood.

As he turns, sweeping the staff high across his body, he catches sight of the woven patterns hanging in the trees out of the corner of his eye. Honor, diligence, and pride, they read. He stabs his weapon at each; short, blunt thrusts morphing into smooth, parrying retreats. Boldly strapped to the widest tree at the head of the grove is a pattern worn faint with time, but still legible: faith.

Teal'c's grip slips, the head of the staff dropping to drag jarringly against the dirt.

As he recovers, he hears the heavy tread of a foot purposively dragged to announce the approach of an ally. There is only one here who would seek him out.

"I was not expecting you again so soon," Ishta observes as she steps out of the forest. He has, in fact, not seen her in many months, though his visits here coordinated purposively in her absence are slightly more regular. She probably means to remind him that she is perfectly aware of his movements.

Ishta never says anything without purpose after all, without five meanings layered underneath the words. There was a time he found this fascinating, a tangled depth that he would have gladly spent a lifetime unraveling. Only nothing is as it should be, she least of all, and there have been fewer and fewer words between them. Teal'c could confirm what she is insinuating, that this place has become nothing but a worthy excuse for him, a default burden to explain his absences, to make his lies to Daniel Jackson slightly more palatable.

"_You aren't coming with us?" Daniel Jackson asks, O'Neill just behind him._

_Teal'c doesn't pause in his packing, reaching for his small case of tretonin, slipping the purple liquid into his bag. "As I informed Colonel Reynolds, I have a previous engagement on Hak'tyl." _

_With O'Neill there, watching them both closely, Daniel Jackson does not dare call his bluff._

Ishta knows very well his time here ceased to be about her long ago.

"Would you care to spar with something that can actually fight back?" she asks, picking up one of the training staves, twirling it in her fingers with deftness that Teal'c can't help but admire. He lets himself pretend, just for a moment, that they are nothing more than warriors bred of grace and skill, a mere pair among millions.

But then he remembers. Those millions are whittled down to struggling handfuls.

As for Ishta, she and her kind only survive because they are abominations, mutations no Goa'uld or First Prime could dream into existence. Pariahs who perhaps ever would have stood apart from their brethren, never to be accepted. Women taking up arms not out of necessity, but out of desire, drive. Women looting symbiotes from fellow Jaffa, back when there had been Jaffa to steal from. Yet they survive, these ex-priestesses and women who will not be wives, thrive even, while the rest of their kind wither and die, just like their customs, just like their strength.

Just like him.

"I know why you are here," she says as she circles him, looking for an opening. He wonders when they became incapable of words without weapons between them. "I know why you come here again and again."

She lunges at him and there is no more time for words, only action and reaction, the dance of attack and retreat. Teal'c has let his training with the staff slip, depending more and more upon the weapons of the Tau'ri. He knows she sees this because her attacks sneak unerringly under his rough edges, pressing at his weak points, yet she always holds back just the slightest bit, goading him with his weaknesses.

He parries, but never out of anger, no passion marring his serene surface.

Only when she tires of the game, her futile attempt to draw some form of reaction out of him, does she finally sweep his feet, winding him a little as his back slams into the ground. She is upon him, pinning him down before he can regain his feet, her staff across his chest.

"You still believe the drug make you weak, less of a warrior," she says, passion sparking in her eyes as she leans on the staff, shifting up and pressing it against his neck. "But you are wrong. Your weakness is of your own making."

He shifts his hips to gain leverage and winds his legs through hers to buck her weight off of him, but she is ready for the maneuver, rolling with the movement like quicksilver, turning his momentum back against him. She raps the head of her staff against his thigh, a tight, stinging reprimand that reminds him of frigid days in the snow with Bra'tac by his side, the teacher patiently molding Teal'c into a warrior of free thought and compassion, while laying on him a burden it would take nearly a century to fully understand.

The very thought of Bra'tac should bring resentment or grief or even the warmth of familiarity, but Teal'c feels nothing, nothing but the crunch of non-existent ice against his skin.

Ishta stares down at him, her expression hard, breathing slightly labored, but in her eyes something else entirely as she searches his face. For a moment, she looks at him as she used to, like she might reach for him, but it is gone just as quickly.

"There is a difference between controlling one's emotions and attempting to eradicate them," she says, rolling off him and onto her feet in one smooth motion. "You have become stone."

She tosses the staff down by his side, and he doesn't miss the flick of disgust in the motion, the way her wrist snaps with impatience as she releases it. "Stone makes a poor bedmate. And an even poorer warrior."

She holds his gaze and as the moments stretch silent between them, he sees the merest break in her haughty mask, a true flash of her anguish and bitter disappointment before she turns to leave.

"O'Neill returned today," Teal'c says, finally finding his voice in the wake of that burning glimpse.

She stops, something tightening in her shoulders, but when she turns, he sees nothing but her resolve. "As you always suspected he would one day."

Teal'c pushes up into a sitting position, feeling the protest of muscles unaccustomed to the rigors of training. "Yes."

Her eyes slip past him, staring into the distance. "So it has finally come, this time of reckoning."

They'd spoken often of this day in the beginning, back in those long lazy hours of night when they would lay with their limbs entwined, voices lowered to impassioned whispers of a future for which they would fight. Together. He remembers feeling that no matter how rough the path became they _would_ find a way. Such surety.

But that was before. Back when Jaffa still filled this galaxy. Back when there was still hope.

"My people and I, we will fight," Ishta pledges, bright and golden in the sunlight and he senses that somehow she still believes. Despite everything that has happened, she still believes they can be free. It's seductive and tempting, and in that moment, he finally sees what maybe he should have long before. It's clear to him as he sits in the dirt and looks up at her that though he may be nothing but a relic of a decaying past, she and her people are the future. Not abominations, not cast-outs, but the last fragile survival of a once proud people.

Above him, Ishta shifts, the sunlight catching the edge of her cheek as her eyes meet his. "Will you?"

Maybe there is one small chance left, Teal'c thinks, one treacherous, narrow, uphill path still to be attempted. Maybe that is faith enough.

He holds out a hand to Ishta.

She helps him to his feet.


	14. Down So Long

**Chapter Five-Down So Long**

When Sam first heard of Earth's final fate, she found it hard to feel much of anything. The five years since she's last seen it are a blur, soft and indistinct and comforting. Easy.

But not this day. Today is full of sharp edges and dangerous words and brittle lies that catch and tear on her skin, refusing to slide by unnoticed.

_Some things you just don't come back from._

There are voices out in the yard, the pitched tones climbing and falling and loaded with things left unsaid and she's caught in them like a current, so she steps out the rear of her house to submit to the pull, concealing herself in darkness and foliage like any other shadow, following the sound of footfalls stomping down the mountainside.

She knows these men. Or she knew them. Or maybe they just knew her.

The third man though…the stranger. He doesn't feel right. That's not his space to fill, striding there in front, shoulders squared against responsibility. Because _he_ would have returned to Earth... Wouldn't he? But no, he's been replaced too.

That's not right.

Her father came, it's how she knows. He must have used the failsafe she'd given him. The one she won't use herself. But he hadn't returned to Earth.

_Things you don't come back from._

She'd known, that sunny day on the mountainside with bruises fresh upon her flesh--so familiar… She'd known he would never come back. It might be the last concrete fact she knows for certain until today. The day Daniel comes.

She watches them approach the gate, watches the way the three men exist in their own separate spheres, so much space shoved between them that they may as well be strangers. She watches Daniel's jaw, the agitated play of muscles and tendons, a fire barely contained. She watches Teal'c's fingers trail over her stitches almost reverently, but uncomprehending.

Only the stranger is still, his back bowed slightly as Daniel dials an address she doesn't know, doesn't want to know. Doesn't. Can't.

_Can't go back._

The wind shifts, blowing in her face and she blinks against the intrusion, her eyes watering. She turns away from the gate.

Walking back up to her house, her solitary footsteps scatter the dust, erasing all evidence of any other passing feet. She sits in her chair in her little house and stares at the empty spot on her wall and tries to forget the feel of paper and words under her fingers.

_Can't._

_

* * *

_

The blank space nags at her, a giant hole on her wall where cloth used to hang. The emptiness lingers long after she covers it with a different pattern, a new quilt, just not the right one.

She feels exposed, unprotected, restless without it, things creeping up on her in the dark. She doesn't understand why. From the basket next to her chair, she pulls out a blue square of fabric, the final piece to the now-absent quilt.

It wasn't on purpose. She never consciously made a decision. The needle and thread are about necessity, about repairing and covering and keeping herself clothed. They are constancy.

They are control.

She learned at the knee of Gairwyn's eldest daughter, her stitches clumsy, the children gathered by her side. They're a bit of a blur, those days since he left. The way she likes them.

She remembers that one day fabric appeared in the supplies her father brings. It keeps her hands busy. The numbers didn't happen until after he came again with words about Earth and its ending, full of facts and numbers, only they were after the fact. Facts that can't be altered.

The first time she looked down and saw the fabric covered with numbers and facts and equations to a universe she tries to forget, she dropped it to the floor, walking a wide berth around it for a week. But then the numbers just built up, threatening to burst out through her skin, so she gave them that one square and then another, allowing that one tiny piece of her to spill out over it when she feels like she might rupture. It keeps things quiet that way, and she thinks maybe one day she'll find the bottom of that well. Maybe it will dry up if she tries hard enough.

For two years she worked on it, ripping thread and pulling numbers, reworking as she went, a puzzle made of fabric squares, moved around step by step, an anchor for her listing existence.

She's adrift without them now that they are gone.

Twisting the one remaining square in her fingers, rumpling the fabric, she peers at the numbers from a different angle, her eyes sharpened by words she tries to forget. Things slip, tumble, falter into place. She sees it.

_We really need your help._

She drops the square to the floor.

* * *

_She's in the forest. _

_Sunlight filters down through the thick trees, painting yellow patterns on the springy earth, rich with loam and decaying leaves. There's the crunch of a twig in front of her, and she drops to a crouch, her weapon tucked in tight against her shoulder, her eyes scanning the landscape in front of her._

"_Sam," someone says, and she spins to her left, calming her breathing and stretching her senses as far as she can, weapon still firmly in place._

_There. A flash of dark blue in the trees, a faint voice she should know._

"_Daniel?" she asks, pushing to her feet to follow. She bobs and weaves through the thick trunks until they thin out, falling away to reveal a large clearing with a stone platform built at its center. On top standing proudly in the clear sunshine is a Stargate._

"_Sam," a voice says again, and she turns, almost stumbling over a DHD._

_Teal'c catches her arm, steadying her. "Are you all right, Major Carter?"_

_Something is not right. "Are you?" she asks._

_He bows slightly, a Cheshire grin on his face that doesn't reach his eyes. "I would appreciate your company."_

"_Sam!"_

_She jerks. Daniel stands in front of the wormhole, nearly indistinct against the sea of rippling blue behind him. "Are you even listening?"_

_Shaking her head, Sam takes a step toward him. "Where are we going?"_

"_I asked you if you recognized this," Daniel says, pressing something cool and solid into her hand. _

_She doesn't look down at the object, just feels the weight of it in her hand. "We're right behind you," she promises as Daniel and Teal'c step through._

_A hand on her arm. "Come on, Carter. Let's get moving. You know how Hammond gets when we make him wait."_

_She tries to turn, tries to lift that heavy weight in her hand, but she's rooted to the ground. His grip is hard on her arm, squeezing her bones, but when she looks down there is nothing, only perfect, clear, unmarred skin._

"_Go! Now!"_

_She turns towards his panicked voice, legs finally breaking free, hands reaching, but there is nothing there. Even the forest is gone, replaced with a black pit, a gaping cliff, the complete absence of everything, crawling towards her across the clearing, beginning to tug at the hem of her skirt. _

_The gate dims as if loosing opacity moment by moment._

_Something cold latches onto her ankle, and she opens her mouth to scream, but nothing comes out._

"_Carter!" his voice shouts, insistent against her ear._

Sam gasps into wakefulness, blinking rapidly against the light invading her room, the sun bright and high in the sky outside her window. The echoes of the dream vibrate through her mind and she squeezes her eyes shut, fingers pressing against her temples.

Dreams are another thing she left behind five years ago. They don't belong here.

They don't matter. They can't.

She walks the rest of the day in a haze, only it's not one full of indistinct comforts, but contrasts, the dream jarring against her daily routine. Something isn't right. She wants to believe the dream is the culprit, the one that doesn't belong, the foreign thing to be ignored, but she just can't quite settle on anything.

She finds herself at Linna's door, staring in at the cozy interior, breathing the familiar smell, and she thinks maybe she will be okay in this space. Nothing can reach her here. Not even the dreams.

But then the unexpected happens.

"I dreamed last night."

The words slip out in an unfamiliar voice, her throat moving well before thought or impulse. Unfamiliar either because she sounds different or it's just been so long that she's forgotten the sound of her own voice.

Linna, sharing a table with her middle child, betrays no surprise at the end of Sam's five-year silence. She simply leans down to her daughter to whisper some command in her ear, the child rising from the table and exiting the house. Linna then turns her full attention to Sam, her hands folded in her lap, calm and steady as if it were any other morning Sam came to this space. "And of what did you dream?" she asks.

Sam shifts, looking down at her hands where they're twisted in the fabric of her skirt. The words are hard to find, thick and weighty on her tongue. "I dreamed. Of before."

Daniel. Teal'c.

_Him_.

"Was it pleasant?" Linna asks, pushing to her feet.

It was…real. It was _them_. But pleasant? Or horrible? She can't tell. She's shivering.

_Can't. Can't. Can't._

"What is this?" Sam asks, panic squeezing her throat, pitching the words.

Linna steps closer, her hand brushing across Sam's forehead and down her cheek as if she is one of her children. And maybe she has been, these long, long years. "I believe you are waking up," she says.

But Sam doesn't want to wake up, to defrost. She just wants her dreamless nights and mindless tasks. Doesn't want to have to think, to consider. To remember.

There is a noise behind them, and Sam spins, heart in her throat. Gairwyn stands in the doorway, a basket in her arms, the muted green showing between the slats whispering the secret of its contents to Sam.

"We never expected you to remain with us forever," Linna explains.

_You can't hide here forever, Sam._

Her hands clench. She can try.

But Gairwyn blocks her escape, the woman and the package that she never wanted to lay eyes upon again. Sam shakes her head, stumbling back a few steps closer to Linna, to her soft hands and comforting scents.

From the start Sam has been with Linna, attaching herself to her household and the sheer foreign appeal of this woman's life. Nothing in Linna's house reminds Sam of anything. At the most, maybe those early hazy years with her mother, and isn't it a bit unexpected that those previously unpalatable memories are now the only ones she allows? Maybe precisely because they are hazy and incomplete and if she stares out of focus at Linna and her family just right, she almost believes that this place has always been her home, her reality.

It's Gairwyn, sharp, unbending Gairwyn, that she studiously avoids, and if either mother or daughter notice, they never comment. Gairwyn always grants Sam the space she craves. Until today.

Staring at her now, Sam isn't reminded of her team, of their missions and close calls and great discoveries, but rather reminded far too much of herself, the woman she'd been before she let Anhur strip that from her. Before she'd allowed herself to be broken.

_No, no, no_, she thinks, fingers digging into her thighs as she fights the foreign press of tears.

She'd thought it laughable at the time, Anhur's boast that she wasn't strong enough to survive. She remembers that now, his vile prophecy she hadn't been prepared for, the way he ferreted out her most heavily guarded secrets, ripped pieces of her away until she was unrecognizable even to herself.

She survived, believed that to be enough. But is survival really the same as living?

_This isn't who you are…_

And her words, her thoughts and voice, that last act of defiance…had it really been rebellion? Or had she freely given him her one last connection to anyone or anything?

Had she…capitulated?

The possibility sickens her, physically doubles her over until she's kneeling on the floor, but the sensation is still weaker than the fear that closes her throat, the subsumed rage and guilt she's never allowed herself to feel, so scared that it might have the power to erase the things most important to her.

Better that they be ignored than destroyed.

Better not to feel or think.

Better to lose herself in the mindless stitch and the animated chatter of Linna's daughters.

Today there is neither, only Gairwyn and her unavoidable associations.

The warrior is dressed much as she ever is, leather leggings tight over thighs used to exertion, arms built for lifting a sword, the stature and posture of a woman who has lived through the loss of father and husband and son, a woman who easily stepped in to fill the gap, a sword maiden of Thor, wise, powerful, slow to anger, and never, ever broken. Not even by the slaughter of her people, a fate dealt to her by Sam's own hands, by SG-1. Yet never a trace of bitterness, just calm surety born of faith in the greater plan, in Thor. Only now does Sam realize the woman's steadiness is equally born of her own confidence in her abilities as much as a distant, benevolent god.

Would such faith have saved Sam? Hadn't she, too, once believed?

_We really need your help._

She's terrified she can't be what they need. But is it better to try and fail than to never try at all?

_He doubts you are strong enough to survive._

She doesn't want to capitulate.

She can't.

Gairwyn crosses the room, pausing to crouch down by Sam, placing the basket next to her knee.

Sam tries to forget, to close her eyes and breathe the scent of Linna's home, the life she's tried to steal her way into. But all she can feel is the hard edge of the basket against her knee, the one containing five-year-old garments infused with half-forgotten scents.

_We really need your help._

Sam's hand lifts up over the edge and down into the pile of fabric. She stares at it there against a sea of color. Green.

And she remembers.

She'd worn green the last day she set foot on her planet and again the day she leveled Anhur's world into nothing more than smoke and ash. She thinks maybe she can smell it still. Burnt flesh and the tang of blood. Sweat and desperation.

She'd thought them lost, forgotten.

Lifting the shirt, she finds a careful patch of fabric on the shoulder that doesn't quite match the rest, Linna's even stitches anchoring it in place. Ragged pieces brought back together. Never quite as they were, but holding.

Holding long enough to be of use again.

Looking up to meet Gairwyn's gaze for the first time in five years, Sam finds something in her eyes like understanding. "Thank you," she says.

Gairwyn nods, her hand firm on Sam's. "You are welcome."

And so it begins.

* * *

Standing in front of the DHD, Sam forces the secrets back to her surface, the combination to a path she never thought to walk again. She touches the glyphs, sharp and cold under fingers used to the soft forgiveness of fabric.

Stepping into the event horizon, she feels herself torn into tiny pieces, nothing more than energy flying through the stars, and when she's put back together on the other side, she wonders if the wormhole can tell, can sense that there's less to her than there used to be. Wonders if it makes a difference.

She breathes rattling, dry desert air, and sits upon the steps in her ungainly, but familiar uniform, the blunt edges of her shortened hair pulled back into a ponytail. And in her fingers, the final piece.

She waits. And when he finally appears, concern on his face, her name spoken as a fractured question, she stands. Her tongue sweeps across her lips, the words building and compressing in her throat like the numbers, vying for escape.

"Yeah, Dad," she says. "It's me."


	15. Patchwork

**Patchwork**

As a baby, Sam's first word wasn't 'mama' or 'dada' or any repetitive nonsense misconstrued as meaningful by overly eager parents. No, nothing so mundane for Jacob's Sammie. Ready to speak her first word, she looked up at him towering over her and thrust out her arms.

"Up," she demanded, fearless from the very beginning. Even then not content to see the world from ground level.

Today it's like hearing her first word all over again, only now he's the one untouched by the crawl of time and she looks older than ever.

"Yeah, Dad. It's me," she says.

Jacob feels that same thrill of pride followed quickly by pure terror, and wonders for a moment if he's giving meaning to nonsense, to words that have none.

Her words are an illusion, he knows, the deceptive sheen of a desert oasis on the horizon. It's tempting to take her words as a sign of a miracle, of the sudden resurgence of his long lost daughter. He wants to believe they have the power to cancel out all those long silent years between, to erase the horrors that stole her words away in the first place. He would be happy to hear them if this were the case.

As it is, she's still at a distance, an invisible buffer separating her from everything else. Not healed, just awake. Aware. To a point. She's miserly with her words, doling them out with excessive economy, speaking only when absolutely necessary.

Then again, Sam was never chatty to begin with, not really. Only when the wonder got the best of her, the universe surprising her, did she let loose an avalanche of words. Even then they'd sometimes fail her, leaving her stalled out in frustration at the limits of their language to encompass the world of possibilities she saw.

He tries to find wonder when he looks at her now, when she allows a precious word to slip loose. All he sees is fearlessness. A reckless child hurtling towards a collision he can't keep her from anymore, because isn't that what he's really been doing all these years by keeping her hidden?

"I need to see Teal'c," she says.

_Up_.

Jacob mourns the safety of her silence.

* * *

Teal'c cannot say he is surprised to receive a request for his presence from Jacob Carter. Having seen Major Carter for himself on Cimmeria, he has long suspected things are not quite as they appear.

The quilt is but one clue among many that she is not as lost as she pretends.

He watches her now as she stands among the silent Tok'ra halls, her antiquated green fatigues clashing jarringly with the deep violet of the crystal walls. She holds a piece of familiar blue cloth in one hand, but does not offer it, and Teal'c does not reach for it.

"Is this part of the schematic?" he asks. He cannot be sure if she looks relieved they discovered the embedded meaning in her quilt or just surprised. At the very least, a missing piece may explain Rodney McKay's frustration, his inability to decipher her message.

Teal'c thinks of Rodney McKay's fingers sliding across her stitches, the beat of jealousy he had felt that this man could understand the inner workings of Major Carter's mind in a way Teal'c will never truly grasp.

She still has not handed over the piece of cloth. She seems to be struggling on the edge of a decision, and Teal'c believes he finally understands why he has been summoned here today.

"Will you return with me?" he asks.

Her fingers clench in the fabric, her spine stiffening.

"It is likely O'Neill will be there," he informs her, because she deserves to know exactly what it is that she is contemplating.

There is a flicker of surprise across her face, telling Teal'c this is not a possibility she considered.

"He returned only a few days ago," he says, laying all the relevant data before her. "Most still believed him dead until that day."

Her tongue darts out to wet her bottom lip and he can see the effort it takes for her to summon words, her jaw flexing and releasing. "He's…okay?" she eventually squeezes out.

Teal'c does not know what she wishes to hear, that in some ways O'Neill is completely unrecognizable, or maybe just the lie—he is fine, the same man he has always been.

"He is O'Neill," Teal'c settles for saying because that truly encompasses it all in the end, meaning everything and nothing at the same time.

She absorbs this information without the slightest ripple, bound in an unnatural stillness much like these decaying halls they stand in. She is silent so long that Teal'c steps forward, reaching for her, but not touching.

"Major Carter?"

She flinches, stillness shattered. Looking up at him, her fingers latch onto his arm, tight just above his elbow, digging in with surprising strength.

"Sam," she says, her voice thin and hoarse in the way her grip is not. "Sam. Please."

Teal'c suspects that abbreviated, incomplete name will not sound any more correct on his tongue than it does in his mind, this disposal of titles and family ties and marks of honor—the very things that have always defined her for him. It does not feel familiar, but disrespectful. Forgetful.

She must see his hesitation because her fingers clench. "Sam," she repeats, making her terms clear.

He considers that perhaps her other names are little more than unpleasant reminders now. That maybe this shortened name says something about how little remains of this woman, belied by the dig of her fingernails into his flesh. He should be able to respect this simple request. She asks little, but it still feels like a fundamental loss of some kind. He stares back at her for long moments and notes the way she refuses to flinch away from the regard, no matter how much she may wish to. Eventually he inclines his head.

"Sam," he says, his voice nearly as ungainly as her own.

She deflates, her hand releasing and she seems smaller now.

Teal'c tries to imagine how Major Carter might have dealt with this situation differently. What the daughter of Jacob Carter would do. Dr. Carter. He wonders which part of her was attracted to the crafting of textiles, which one whispered the numbers and figures that so absorb Rodney McKay. Most importantly, what part of her held that last piece back? What part took the step to come this far to give it to him, only to hold back?

"Will you come?" he asks.

She looks up at him and for a moment she is familiar again, stubbornness and courage building on top of obvious fear. The little square of fabric disappears back into her pocket.

"Yes," she says, the word blunt and unconditional.

Teal'c is forced to consider that Sam may just be the strongest part of her after all.

* * *

Daniel walks into his office and stumbles to an abrupt stop.

Sudden déjà vu makes him dizzy because Jack is only a few steps behind him, and Sam is standing in his office as if waiting for them. She's wearing green fatigues and for the moment it's enough to create the illusion of things being as they once were. She turns to him, mouth opening as if to say something, only to snap back shut, her skin losing all color as she gazes past his shoulder.

Daniel turns to see Jack standing motionlessly in the doorway, staring at Sam as if she's a ghost, or worse, and just like that the illusion shatters.

Sam backs up a step, hitting hard against the edge of his desk, stumbling slightly. Daniel reaches out a hand to steady her. By the time he manages to look back again, Jack is gone.

Next to him, Sam is trembling.

"Sam," Daniel says, glancing around for a chair. Her death grip on the edge of his desk makes him worry for her ability to stay standing.

"I'm okay," she says, and Daniel's left to do another double take. She looks up at him, and her eyes, God, her eyes. There's something recognizable there. She glances away then, looking towards the door. She takes a small shuffling step, only to come to a stop like she can't quite make up her mind about something.

Daniel doesn't want her to leave. He can't let her leave.

"I have something for you," he says, because seeing her standing there is doing strange things to his brain and all he can think about is her box. He's lugged it around from site to site, sealing it up with industrial packaging tape and a giant label that says 'essential research.' Why the random collection of items hold more importance than textbooks or supplies they may need, Daniel doesn't know. He's just careful never to leave it behind.

He looks at her, waiting for a reaction maybe, holding up his hands to make sure she's not going anywhere. "Can you…wait?"

She nods, and her cheeks aren't so pale anymore while she stands there staring at him like maybe he's the one who's lost his mind.

Turning his back on her, he wrenches open the doors to his large cabinet, dropping down to his heels to get at the lowest section. He pulls the box from the bottom, waving away the cloud of dust displaced by the movement. Placing it on the floor, Daniel pulls out a pocketknife to cut free the flaps, pulling them open.

Sam steps closer, looking down over his shoulder. He hears her breath catch and then she's crouching on the floor next to him. She hesitates before gingerly reaching into the box, touching the things there but not lifting them.

There's no order to the things in the box, no careful reason for each object included. There's no technology or research or anything else one might imagine Sam Carter would find particularly valuable. It's simply the jumble of things left behind in her wake. There are a couple changes of clothing she'd left on base, a few CDs, a thick envelope of pictures, an untouched bag of her favorite candy, a scribbled post-it note—everything he found in her locker and office that he couldn't bear to think of someone else touching.

"You kept all of this?" she asks, barely a whisper.

He'd like to think it means he always knew she would come back, but it's probably just a sign of his inability to let go. Maybe that's what makes him so good at his job, refusing to let go of the past, to let it fall silent. He tried to box her up like some ancient culture…the archeology of Sam.

But unlike some lost civilization, she's sitting here next to him, contradicting those careful words she'd written for him only a few days before. Shifting forward, he pulls the small slip of paper out of his pocket, exposing the words that already look worn with wear.

_Some things you just don't come back from._

They stare down at it sitting there in his hand.

"I'm sorry," she says, obviously still not used to forming words and sentences, giving sounds meaning, but making the effort nonetheless.

He folds the paper carefully in half, running his fingernail along the crease. He places it in the box, adding her words to the collection.

"You have nothing to be sorry for, Sam," he says, feeling the warmth of her shoulder next to his. He touches her fingers, squeezing them gently. She stiffens at the contact, taking a deep breath, and then she's squeezing back, a tiny pulse of contact before she pulls away.

Daniel files that fleeting touch away with everything else.

* * *

Jack isn't ready for what seeing Carter again does to him. Isn't ready to realize time has dimmed nothing—neither the good nor the bad.

She hadn't been surprised to see him, he remembers, just caught off-guard, startled.

He doesn't need her words to understand. He saw the way every muscle in her body tightened at once, jerking her rigid with a swamp of emotions he won't even hazard a guess at.

And him? Well, he'd just fled.

_It's what you do_.

In the hangar, Jack is working on his ship with something bordering on mania. He's making sure everything is ready for take off at a moment's notice, because leaving is the only option. He's done it before, but it's even harder this time, no matter how fresh the memory of her horror is. He'll go back and wait for Vala on that anonymous planet and try to forget the foolish notion that he could somehow be part of this again. That it wouldn't matter what he's done and what he is.

Rounding the front of his ship, Jack comes to an abrupt stop.

Carter is standing a few feet away and this time there is no reaction, not the tiniest movement in her and he wonders how long she's been standing there preparing herself for this moment.

"Carter," he says, the name escaping his lips without thought and he sees the way she flinches, the way she tries to hide the telltale jerk of muscles, absorb it into her stillness.

Her hands are fisted at her sides as she stares at the floor between them and he knows she's building towards something, but that she may not get there on her own.

"If you want me to go, I will," Jack says.

_Coward_.

Her eyes close for a moment and then she's taking a breath and looking up at him, meeting his gaze squarely. His first thought is that she's so much calmer, so much more together than he remembers all those years ago. But maybe she's learned to fake it. He certainly has.

Her eyes move slowly over his entire body, returning to linger on his neck. He has no idea which one of them she's testing.

"Just nod your head or something, and I'm gone," he says.

He doesn't realize how much he's banking on her dismissal until she looks up at him and firmly shakes her head. He swallows against the tightness in his throat and knows that as much as he's hesitating taking off again, he wants to stay even less.

"Are you sure?"

Her eyes drop away for a moment, slipping out of focus, and then reconnect with him. She nods.

"_Really_ sure?" he insists.

This time her lips press together in annoyance, her jaw tightening, and he can't help it, like some old reflex unearthing itself he puts his hands up in surrender, his voice tinged with amusement. "Okay, okay. So you're sure. I get it."

There's something swift and painful in his gut when her lips twitch like she might actually be thinking of smiling, even if the gesture doesn't materialize.

He misses her smile.

_You miss a hell of a lot more than that._

Jack takes a sharp step back, nausea rolling in his stomach.

Whatever expression he's wearing now, whatever Carter may see in it, she's gone pale and he thinks how stupid he is that he could pretend for even a moment that either of them could forget.

She's breathing a little hard as she points back over her shoulder, informing him that she's going to leave.

He nods his understanding, but instead of moving away himself, he stands there to watch her retreat. It seems to take her a great deal of effort to turn her back on him, to trust him that much. Her shoulders are tense, but she does it.

She reaches for the door and he can see it—her hands are shaking.

He should have left while he damn well had the chance.

* * *

Sam doesn't stop as she exits the hangar, not even when she feels the door finally free her from his gaze boring into her flesh. Her breath is coming out short and shallow, her fingers tingling, but she keeps moving. One foot in front of the other, faster and faster, building momentum. She can only hope it will carry her far enough. Maybe make all of them believe that she's braver than she is. Stronger. Solid.

If she stops, takes a full breath, lets her thoughts slow long enough to dig in—she'll falter. Be flattened by everything here.

But if she can just keep moving, become nothing but speed and adrenaline and impossible problems to solve…

Maybe she'll be fearless.


	16. Epilogue to Part 2

**epilogue**

Daniel cautiously pushes open the door to Rodney's lab, sticking only his head inside. One can never be too cautious around Rodney. Not necessarily because of the propensity of experiments blowing up, but that Rodney himself is rather combustible from time to time.

Seeing that Rodney is doing nothing more than staring at a wall, Daniel risks stepping into the room. "Hey," he says.

Rodney's eyes peel reluctantly away from the quilt tacked up in front of him, the newest piece from Sam duct-taped haphazardly into the bottom corner. He doesn't manage much more than a grunt in greeting before his eyes snap back.

"Still driving you insane?" Daniel asks.

"I'm almost convinced it's complete gibberish," Rodney grumbles, his head tilting to the side as if that might somehow help. "If not for the fact that I think it might just be brilliant."

Daniel isn't sure which possibility has Rodney more disgruntled. The fine line between gibberish and genius is one they've been flirting with for a long damn time. "Sam hasn't said anything more about it?"

Rodney shakes his head. "Considering she made it, she does a pretty good job of pretending it doesn't exist." He jabs a finger in the direction of the lab. "She's still looking over my work on the drone weapon."

Daniel paces to the window and looks down onto the space below. Rodney likes to be able to see what his 'minions,' as he calls them, are doing at any given moment. He claims it's for safety, the lab workers apparently less likely to blow up Earth's last secure outpost with their idiocy if Rodney can keep one eye on them at all times.

At one end of the lab, Sam sits at a large table with schematics spread around her like a fan, littered with erasers and pencils and crumpled up wads of paper. It should be comforting, the sight of Sam in motion, hard at work at the things that had once been the very compass point of her identity. Somehow it isn't. Maybe because even Daniel can't ignore the way she doesn't quite fit the space around her anymore, the way the pencil is stiff and clumsy in her fingers.

He hasn't seen much of her since the day she returned. She seems to have disappeared into a routine optimized to see as few people as possible. Her waking hours she spends here in Rodney's lab as he peppers her with every idea he's had in the last five years as if he's been starved for an intellectual equal, or is maybe just looking for reassurance.

Her nights Daniel is pretty sure she spends in Teal'c's quarters, just like back at the SGC so many years before. He tries not to be jealous of the obvious connection there, the fact that she feels comfortable with Teal'c in a way she doesn't with any of the rest of them. Teal'c also seems more relaxed in her presence than he has in a long time and it's hard to stay angry at something so obviously vital to them both.

Daniel gets the feeling this isn't permanent anyway, like she's floating through this space, fulfilling some sort of quota, proving something to herself, but with every intention of disappearing again if they all somehow survive this.

Behind Daniel, Rodney lets out a frustrated sigh and steps up next to him. Rubbing at his forehead, his eyebrows draw together in concern. "She won't even use a calculator for some reason."

Daniel wants to point out that it's probably a small miracle they've got her using a pencil. Part of him is still waiting for her to pull out a needle and thread.

There's a knock on the door, and they both turn to see Jack step into the office.

Rodney gives Jack a wary nod and scuttles back to his desk, no doubt realizing he should pull everything together for their imminent meeting.

Jack is happy to ignore Rodney as usual. He crosses over to stand next to Daniel. "You going to be ready to leave in the morning?"

Daniel nods. This will be their second meeting with Vala Mal Doran to see if she ran off with their down payment or is actually going to deliver on her end of the bargain. He thinks bringing Cam and Teal'c as backup wouldn't be a bad idea if not for the suspicion that Teal'c and Jack in that small of a space together could be epically bad. Or not. You can never tell with those two, these days more than ever.

After all, Jack hadn't taken off after Sam's arrival like he would have predicted. Sure, Jack sticks mostly to the hangars, rarely appearing for meals, but he's still here. Sometimes Daniel catches him huddled over plans and maps with Reynolds. They remind Daniel a bit of Rodney and Sam in those moments, the way Reynolds bounces all his plans off Jack as if looking for reassurance. Or maybe just someone smart and ballsy enough to point out his mistakes. Only this isn't Jack's fight to lead. Not anymore.

They'd all do well to remember that.

"What happens after?" Daniel asks.

Jack looks at him in confusion. "After?"

"Yeah," Daniel says, crossing his arms over his chest. "You said you'd help us get some weapons."

"And now I have," Jack says, his voice going flat as he finally catches on.

In light of Jack's history, Daniel doesn't think it's so unreasonable to want to know if he's going to take off on them again. People leave. It's in their very nature.

"So you're done," Daniel says, challenging him to admit it. Needing, for some reason, to actually hear the words.

Jack shifts. "There's still Netan."

That really isn't an answer. It's an evasion. "Right," Daniel says, turning away. He may just prefer Rodney's fractured frustration to going another round with Jack O'Neill the brick wall.

But then Jack surprises him yet again. "I'm in for the long haul, Daniel," he says quietly with the tone of a man well and truly trapped, but resigned to it.

Daniel looks back at him, but Jack's turned to the window now, his eyes glued to something down in the lab. Or rather someone.

Before Daniel can process this latest curve ball from Jack, the office door opens again.

"Okay, McKay," Reynolds says, stepping into the office with Teal'c and Cam right behind. "Get us all caught up."

The men grab seats while Rodney starts in on their weekly update. The talk of plans and weapons and invasions and probabilities of success wash over Daniel, his attention instead caught on watching the people crammed into the office.

None of it is right. Jack is too deliberate, as if every word or action has been thought through ten times. Teal'c is listless, quiet, almost detached. Anxiety is a base state for Rodney, but it's the concern clouding his expression every time he looks at one of them, the awareness that everything is off that isn't right. Rodney isn't supposed to be that self-aware.

Reynolds is hesitating, and Sam has one foot out the door.

As for Daniel…he doesn't know what he is anymore.

All he can feel is a strange tightness building in his belly, something that takes him long moments to identify as he sits there with them, the entire team past and present. It's not the familiar, dependable anger, but something much, much worse.

It's hope.


	17. Prologue to Part 3

Part Three: Reckoning

**Prologue**

Cam is running.

There's a path of sorts ahead of him, but he's not following it. Instead he's darting in and out of the crumbled remains of what had once been concrete buildings and metal sheds, dodging mangled rebar and fallen trees, trying to be as small a target as possible.

There was a time this planet was known as Delta Site. A time a human population of about five hundred called this place home, or at least as close to home as an alien planet can be. Now there's just rubble and a crazy lunatic running for his life.

Cam's heartbeat is thudding away in his head, sweat trailing down his neck into his shirt, but the pounding he's really worried about are the tromping footsteps behind him that refuse to slow. Something that can be said about Anubis' drone soldiers is that they don't tire. They just keep moving until they die.

Cam really hopes he isn't about to find out what that feels like.

A blast smacks into a tree just to Cam's right and he ducks left, ignoring the scent of ozone and charred wood as he sprints for the low cover offered by what had once been a school. Walls once filled with young voices and the hope of a future generation, only now charred out. There's been nothing but silence since Anubis found Delta and snuffed it from existence.

Cam darts a reckless glance back over his shoulder, estimating exactly how much of a lead he has left. Not enough, he thinks, just as he finally catches sight of what he's aiming for. Pumping his legs as hard as he can, he pours whatever last reserve he's got left into crossing the distance.

"Now!" he bellows as he jumps the low wall, his shoulder slamming into the dirt as he hits the ground and rolls.

Kate Ortiz pops up next to him and he gets is a brief impression of her face screwed up in determination as she hefts her gun. He thinks she may yell as she pulls the trigger, but then there's a bright pulse of light and loud sound like an electric whine. Cam instinctively slaps his hands over his ears, squeezing his eyes shut. He'd probably bury his head too if there were a nice patch of sand handy.

He holds that position, waiting for the final blow, but as the seconds tick by, everything settles into stillness. Cracking one eye open, Cam looks up at Ortiz, still standing, staring off back in the direction he'd come from.

She looks a bit…stunned. But alive.

Alive is good.

"Did it work?" Cam asks, unfolding out of his protective posture, but not getting to his feet. Three years at the SGC taught him caution.

Ortiz lifts one hand to her hair, brushing back at dark strand that has escaped her ponytail. "I think…I think maybe it did."

Just to be sure, Cam drags himself to his feet, peering suspiciously over the edge of the crumbled wall. The thing is sprawled on its back about thirty yards away, looking pretty damn dead. Gesturing for Ortiz to stay behind the cover offered by the wall, Cam cautiously approaches the polymer-clad, wannabe Darth Vader lying in the dirt. Stepping closer, he taps it with his foot. It jiggles a bit, but doesn't protest or get up and kill him, so Cam kicks it again, a lot harder this time—mostly for fun. Only his toe doesn't think it's so fun.

Hopping on one foot, he twists back around to look at Ortiz, flashing her a grin. "Well spank me rosy," he says. "That actually worked. Remind me to kiss McKay when we get back. I don't care how ugly he is."

Ortiz smiles, but her eyes are still on the soldier, and there's no humor, only sorrow and something like confusion.

"Kate?" Cam asks.

She jerks a little, dragging her gaze from the soldier. "I thought…it would feel better," she says, one shoulder lifting in a half-shrug. "More satisfying. Finally killing the thing that killed us."

Kate Ortiz was barely a college grad when her family was first tapped to escape Earth. One among thousands set up on another planet to start a colony, to ensure the survival of the human race. She was one of only three to survive when Anubis' drone showed up here. It was one of the first attacks by the new soldier and it had only taken one to completely wipe them out, taking a hell of a lot of the last vestiges of hope they'd represented.

She's not a soldier, not really. Simply a woman put in a position where fighting may be all there is left. She's put on the uniform, done the training, but she's still an orphan looking for answers, finding only uncomfortable truths instead.

Revenge doesn't fix anything. It doesn't bring people back.

"No, it doesn't. Not really," Cam admits. "But I promise, standing on Earth again…that _will_ feel better."

She glances down at the weapon in her hands, as if finally considering the long-term implications of this tiny face off today.

They can finally fight back.

She smiles, and this time, it reaches her eyes.

Cam grabs his radio. "Hey, Charles," he says into it. "Contact Reynolds. It works."

A garbled shout—something like a yeehaw—filters back through. "Yes, sir!"

Cam rubs at his bruised shoulder, looking down at the drone. Now that the adrenaline is fading, he's remembering that he promised McKay he'd bring the body of Mr. Doom and Gloom here back for study. He feels his smile slipping. "Remind me, how did we get stuck with this job again?"

Ortiz hefts the weapon on her shoulder. "We were the only two stupid enough to volunteer."

"Right. Of course," Cam says. "Lucky us."

"Yeah," Ortiz says, giving the drone a solid kick of her own. "Lucky us."


	18. Steady Pull

**Chapter One: Steady Pull**

McKay's lab is as empty as Sam has ever seen it. Everyone with even the tiniest amount of technical skill has spent the last three weeks in the storage bays, modifying every weapon they have to emit the energy pulse to disable Anubis's drone soldiers.

This leaves only Sam and McKay in the lab digging through a backlog of research, trying to find anything that might increase the chances of success of the mission to retake Earth. Unfortunately this means that McKay has given up any pretext of not being obsessed with her quilt. Sam thinks she may have to smother him with it if he looks at her one more time with that half-confrontational, half-wheedling gaze of his.

"What about this?" McKay asks, jabbing a finger at an equation he's copied to a whiteboard. There are four such boards hung side by side, covered with her numbers, and none of them make any more sense to her than they do to McKay.

"I don't know," she says, keeping her gaze averted from the numbers. It hurts to look at them.

McKay eyes her, and for a second she thinks he's going to push her on this, call her bluff, or maybe just ask why she bothered to come back if she was going to be so unhelpful. It's just a flash though, quickly subsumed. She wonders what Daniel and Teal'c have threatened him with.

_Don't push her. She's way too fragile._

McKay turns back to the numbers and she feels a beat of something that should be relief but instead tastes far too much like disappointment.

She doesn't know why it's easier to dismiss the numbers as echoes of insanity than to admit that maybe she hadn't been quite as stoic as she thought that day her father told her about Earth. Maybe it's hard to accept that a lot more has been going on than even she's been aware of.

She lifts her eyes to the quilt and its familiar contours, letting the details blur out to something indistinct and comforting. She lets the familiar feeling build in her chest—blankness, numbness—but just underneath, memories. They rise sharp and uninvited, her skin tingling with an unexpected rush.

She'd been thinking about Earth and protection and what she possibly could have done to save them, if only she'd been there. That's where the numbers came from, she realizes, it's what they create, a leap of faith and logic, a way to turn brutality back on the assailant, how to neutralize violence. How she might have wrapped herself up in an impenetrable shield, how nothing would have been able to reach her—isolated, protected, perfect.

She's still not sure if it's a schematic or a fantasy.

But she must have known, even then, that it would lead her here. Inevitable.

McKay sighs, his pen skittering across the table. "It has to all mean _something_," he mutters under his breath.

Like most people here, McKay is looking for a miracle. He's just looking in the wrong place.

Sam pushes to her feet, trying to ignore the way her fingers are shaking, the breathless edge of panic never far from her chest. It's all getting louder day-by-day.

McKay swivels to look at her as she makes her retreat. The disappointment on his face is obvious, but to his credit, she can see that he's at least trying to hide it. "Yeah," he says, nodding like it was his idea in the first place. "Why don't we take a break?"

She's already halfway to the door.

Out in the hall it's quiet. Quiet, blissful calm, but it doesn't last, voices echoing in the distance. There's too many people here, too many knowing looks and high tension and it's building up on her skin, threatening to flatten her.

What she really needs is to get away. Just for a little while, a few days to breathe. Only she doesn't have anywhere to go. She's scared that if she sets foot on Cimmeria again, she'll never leave.

It's dangerously appealing.

So instead she stays. Stays and tries not to crumble.

* * *

Jason Reynolds's office is much like the man himself—Spartan, utilitarian, but with the occasional glimmer of forgotten comfort and camaraderie. There's order here, certainly, but also memory. The stiff regularity of rows of binders and logs and rosters and maps are only occasionally interrupted with the few items that could be considered personal—a worn baseball tucked in next to a small color photo with curling edges, a spindly plant somehow kept alive in the underground space against all odds, and a framed drawing of the _Enola Gay, _whose symbolism Daniel can't even begin to interpret.

He hadn't known Reynolds all that well before the move to Omega. All he has are vague impressions of Reynolds and Jack serious and focused on joint missions, and almost gregarious on downtime, lobbing jokes and half-serious bets about whose team will end up inexplicably naked next. Serious and focused certainly still describe Reynolds now that he knows him better, but there isn't much humor left. Daniel doesn't know if that's because there really isn't much to laugh about anymore, or if like many commanders before him, Reynolds feels the need to keep himself slightly aloof from those he commands.

That had never been Hammond's way, but Daniel feels disloyal even entertaining the comparison because it not only belittles all Reynolds has done for them, but also Hammond's last great sacrifice, this feeling that the general had abandoned them rather than protecting their retreat. Idle comparisons don't do either of them justice.

Daniel drags his attention from the office around him and focuses back on the report in his hands. He meets with Reynolds here once a week on what careful calculations have told them are as close to quiet Thursday mornings as exist anymore. They sip the not quite coffee from '732 while Daniel updates him on the latest work done in the research and translation department. They are all still searching for that one alien cache with the power to change everything, their own private Holy Grail.

"Anything from that Ancient cartouche SG-4 found?" Reynolds asks.

Daniel nods. "There were several addresses on it, but we've already visited most of them. There is one they seem pretty excited about in particular though: P9R-872."

"And?" Reynolds prompts, apparently hearing the hesitation in Daniel's voice.

"No gate as far as we can tell," he says. "It should take about three days by ship to get there."

Reynolds whistles. It's a SG team's most feared mission—long-term space travel. Daniel thinks they've all become far too accustomed to the instantaneous after so long with the Stargates in their lives. No one has time for the journey.

"Do you think it could be important?" Reynolds asks, probably already mentally deciding who can be pulled off tasks, what ships can and can't be spared. At any given time the guy has to have thousands of details and tasks up in the air, and Daniel in no way envies him that.

Daniel shrugs. "It could be. But I also wouldn't bet my life on Gary's grasp of nuance." Making the jump from a word that _might_ possibly mean depository if you twist it enough to assuming there is an Ancient repository on the planet says a lot more about Gary's enthusiasm than his translation skills. Not to mention the small fact that the word depository and repository are not as synonymous as Gary might hope.

Reynolds is still mulling it over when there's a brisk knock at the door. "Come," he calls out.

Daniel looks up as Cam and Jack step into the office. "Look who's back," Cam says, hooking a thumb over his shoulder at Jack.

Reynolds leans forward, possible Ancient planet pushed aside. "Did you track down Ms. Mal Doran?"

"Eventually," Jack says, stepping into the room and leaning back against a bookshelf. There's something hard in his voice that Daniel takes to mean Vala had done her best not to be found. Despite Daniel's misgivings, she had come through on the weapons delivery, but disappeared again soon after. Apparently her reluctance to get involved with their quest for the Lucian Alliance resurfaced with a vengeance. Jack's been chasing after odd sightings of her on and off for weeks now.

"And?" Reynolds prompts.

"And she's arranged an introduction."

Daniel wonders exactly what Jack had to say or do to get it. As far as he can tell, Jack doesn't seem to have any new bruises.

"When?" Reynolds asks.

"Four days."

Reynolds's hand twitches. "That soon?"

Jack shrugs as if to say, "It is what it is." It's not his job to think of the big picture, to know how all the pieces fit together, to foresee gaps and problems and double crosses. It's Reynolds's, whether he wants it or not.

"Okay," Reynolds says. "You and Daniel—."

Jack lifts a hand to stop him. "You're going to need to find someone else."

"What?"

"Trust me," Jack says, "you do not want me there for that meeting."

"Why not?"

He pulls a face. "Let's just say the Lucian Alliance and I have had our disagreements over the years."

"So you're asking us to trust Vala?" Daniel asks.

Jack gives Daniel a wry smile that seems to question Daniel's sanity. "Trust her? No. She'll sell you out to save her own skin, never forget that. But right now her interests line up with yours and she's the best bet you've got."

A ringing endorsement.

"I'll go, sir," Cam volunteers.

Daniel doesn't miss the way Reynolds's eyes dart to Jack as if looking for his opinion on who should replace him. It's becoming a dangerous tic. The way Jack stares back at Reynolds, his face schooled to stubborn blankness, tells Daniel he is more than aware of this.

Reynolds returns his gaze to his desk, staring down at the files in front of them as if he can portend the future in them if he just shifts through them enough. He rolls his neck and closes the file in front of him with a brisk snap.

"Okay," he says. "Daniel, tell Gary we can't get to the new address right now. And Jack, contact Vala. The meeting is on."

Jack nods, pushing off the wall and heading for the door. Passing Cam, he pauses, darting a quick glance at Daniel. "Netan's a slimy son of a bitch and smart as all hell," he warns. "But if it's power you're after, he's your guy."

Cam nods, looking grateful for any insight of what it is he's getting himself into.

"Just watch your back. And if Vala runs…" Jack slaps Cam on the shoulder, leaning into him. "For God's sake, keep up."

On that promising note, Jack disappears back out the door.

"Goody," Cam says, crossing his arms over his chest. "Sound like this is going to be fun."

"I can't wait," Daniel mutters.

The door closes after Cam as he leaves.

Behind his desk, Reynolds is still staring at the tangle in front of him, a giant Gordian knot waiting to be cut.

Daniel settles back in his chair, the small, framed drawing on the office wall catching his eye again. He considers that maybe what the _Enola Gay_ is really about is reminding Reynolds that in the end, someone has to make that final call, decide to push the button.

No going back.

* * *

Jack is slouched in a chair in the back of Daniel's office, his feet kicked up on something that could be a really old artifact. Daniel, working at his desk, hasn't so much as glared in Jack's direction, so he has to assume it isn't all that important. Either that, or Daniel has just gotten used to things breaking.

Jack has been carting back and forth to Omega for almost four weeks now. Just long enough for Daniel to stop looking surprised every time he comes back. Now with the Netan thing finally set in motion though, Jack doesn't have a heading. He's left treading water like everyone else here. Daniel's office is as good a place as any, he supposes.

There's a soft knock at the door.

"Yeah," Daniel says, not looking up from his desk.

Carter walks in, coming to a stop as she catching sight of Jack out of the corner of her eye. She turns towards him, the motion controlled, methodical. She nods, acknowledging his presence. He nods back. That's pretty much the extent of their interactions these days, but it still feels like a small miracle. She's getting used to seeing him around. Slowly.

He still almost automatically gets to his feet in slow, predictable steps, circling around the room so he's not between her and the only exit. He sees her shoulders relax as she tracks the movement.

When he settles down in one spot again, Carter turns her full attention back to Daniel, the entire little dance between them having taken only moments. She hands Daniel a folder.

Daniel glances at it, his eyebrows scrunching. "P9R-872? Reynolds decided not to send anyone."

She bites her lip, her eyes darting briefly to Jack. Turning back to the desk, she grabs a pen and scribbles something on a piece of paper. She shoves it towards Daniel.

"You want to go there," Daniel says slowly like he's trying to wrap his mind around Carter's sudden interest in a planet the Ancients may have _possibly_ once visited. "You think it's really that important?"

She nods, but Jack's more interested in the way her hand is fisted behind her back, one finger hooked in her belt like she's agitated but trying to hide it.

"For your project?" Daniel asks.

She hesitates just a fraction of a second this time before she nods.

She's lying.

Daniel doesn't seem to notice. "There's no Stargate there, Sam. And we don't have any ships free to make the trip right now."

Jack is absolutely certain it isn't the destination she cares about, probably not even the mission. It's all there in every angle of her body, the way she's holding herself. She wants the time, the chance to get out of here. Jack figures she's got to be feeling at least as claustrophobic as he is these days.

He thinks maybe that's what makes him do it.

"I'll take her," Jack says.

Daniel's eyes fly to him in alarm, his disapproval of the unexpected offer clear. It's like an unspoken agreement, this idea that no one is going to push Carter, to expect too much from her, but Jack figures expecting too much from her is about as close to normal as they can ever hope to get. Or maybe he's just sickly curious to see if she'll actually push back.

Carter turns to look at him, something sharp and almost familiar in her eye like she's perfectly aware that he's testing her. He wonders if she knew what she was getting into when she didn't ask him to leave while she had the chance.

"You don't need me for the Netan thing anyway," Jack reminds Daniel with a shrug.

Daniel looks like he really wants to object, to come up with any other plan, and Jack doesn't blame him. But they both know that everyone else is already busy with other tasks, their meager population stretched dangerously thin.

There's no other choice. It's nice to have that work in his favor every once and a while.

"Is that okay, Sam?" Daniel asks when he comes short of any other options.

Carter opens her mouth as if to speak, but can't quite force the words. Jack wonders if anyone else has even the slightest idea why.

_His hand, tight around her throat. Her body helpless under his._

"_Say it!"_

_Not even his fists convince her to speak._

Jack shakes free of the clinging memory. God, this is a really bad idea.

"Sam?" Daniel asks again.

She lifts her chin and nods firmly, managing to look a lot less panicked than he would have expected. Or maybe he just honestly hadn't thought she'd take him up on the offer.

Hell.

"It's settled then," he forces himself to say with more nonchalance than he feels. "I'll make sure the ship's ready to go." Turning on his heel, he strides out of the room, coming to a stop right out of sight.

"Sam," he hears Daniel say.

There's a shuffling sound like someone moving papers, but nothing more. Jack tries to imagine the unspoken.

"You don't have to do this," Daniel says. "We all understand how you feel…"

There's the thump of a palm against a flat surface, a voiceless burst of temper that surprises him. In the following silence, he hears it.

"No, you don't."

The voice is low and thin, the words stiff like a foreign language on a clumsy tongue…but it's her. Her voice.

Jack leans back against the wall next to the door. He's not consciously eavesdropping, just can't move away. He's frozen to the spot. He hasn't heard her voice in well over five years, and only then raised as a scream or a curse.

"I…I forgave him a long time ago," she says. "He was a prisoner too."

Jack closes his eyes.

"Then why…." Daniel's voice trails off, clearly thrown by their behavior, by her inability to say so much as a word in his presence.

Daniel thinks he has it all worked out. Thinks he knows what really happened between them.

He doesn't have a clue.

"Because this isn't about what he did to me, Daniel," she says, and it feels like Jack's skin is too tight, squeezing out all his oxygen. "It's about what I did to him."

_You should have killed me._

_I know._

Jack pushes away from the wall, unable to bear hearing even one more of her words.

* * *

Teal'c opens the door to his quarters, his eyes sweeping across the space.

He finds Sam sitting against the wall with her knees drawn into her chest, an open cardboard box on one side of her and a small packed bag on the other. She's changed into jeans and casual athletic shoes, but still wears her patched green shirt over a black T-shirt, her fingers picking at the threads in the shoulder. It seems the rumor he has heard is true.

"Sam," he says, and she looks up at him, her eyes wide and cheeks pale. "You do not have to do this."

Her arms flex around her knees, something in her eyes shifting as the stubborn line of her jaw lifts her chin. "Yes, I do."

"You have nothing to prove."

She shakes her head. "That's not what this is about, Teal'c."

"Are you certain?"

She stares back at him, but before she can answer there is a brisk knock at the door. She stares at it a moment before turning her regard once more to him. "I need to do this, Teal'c."

Whether or not that is true, it seems equally clear that he will not be able to change her mind. He crosses the room and pulls the door open.

O'Neill stands on the other side, his body mired in the stillness that Teal'c still finds difficult to reconcile with the man he had once known. "Teal'c," he says, nodding his head.

"O'Neill," Teal'c answers, pulling the door wider.

"I'm looking for--," he starts to say, stalling when his eyes find Sam. "Ah." He gestures back over his shoulder. "The ship's ready."

Sam nods, pushing to her feet and shouldering her bag, nothing of hesitation in her stance. While the wisdom of this trip is still uncertain, her determination is not. There is nothing for Teal'c to do but step aside and hope that whatever it is she is looking for will not merely make things worse.

She pauses by his side, touching his arm and turning her face up to him. She gives him a small smile of farewell, her words having fled her completely.

Teal'c inclines his head. "Be well."

She nods, her fingers squeezing his arm. Letting go, she walks to the door, her path keeping her as far from O'Neill as the small space allows. O'Neill quickly steps out of her way. They are both giving so much effort to staying out of the other's way, to not looking at one another that Teal'c wonders how this mission can possibly work.

Once Sam is in the hall, O'Neill turns to follow her, but Teal'c stops him by reaching for his arm. "O'Neill, you will speak with me."

His eyebrows go up, but he still steps back into the room as if he has accepted the fruitlessness of attempting to avoid this conversation. "Sure. Of course." He turns to Sam. "I'll meet you in the hangar?"

She nods, glancing between them, sending Teal'c a look he doesn't find difficult to interpret. He has become accustomed to the assumption that any meeting between himself and O'Neill will end in blood, no matter how misplaced it is. The door closes behind her.

"You are going," Teal'c observes.

O'Neill grimaces, perhaps finding criticism where Teal'c intends none. "We'll be back. Long before Reynolds gets things moving."

Plans have a way of spitting out and flaring like a candle in a careless draft. O'Neill's intentions may very well mean nothing. No more than Reynolds'. No more than his own. But that is not why he has held O'Neill back.

He watches O'Neill, searching himself for the anger everyone suspects him of, the disappointment or betrayal that they say should be brewing in his chest. O'Neill lied to them, abandoned their cause mid-fight, and yet Teal'c feels none of this. Perhaps he truly is nothing more than the stone Ishta accuses him of being. And yet Teal'c finds it difficult to keep his eyes upon the once familiar face of his comrade.

Maybe O'Neill sees something of this because he shifts, his voice lowering. "I'm sorry, Teal'c."

"For what reason?" For the real truth is that Teal'c begrudges O'Neill his decisions no more than he does Sam. They both faced an untenable situation in what may have been the only possible way. He accepts that and needs no apology for it.

O'Neill's eyes shift, drifting past Teal'c. "I'm sorry I couldn't be who you wanted me to be."

Teal'c feels his heart leap in his chest, a dull throb that seems to radiate from his very bones.

_I can save these people._

_Many have said that. __But you are the first I believe could do it._

That day on Chulak seems so far away now. Teal'c suspects neither of them really understood what it was they embarked on that day, nor the inexorable chain of events they had recklessly thrown into motion. And perhaps this is the real reason Teal'c has avoided O'Neill so well since his return, not out of anger, but of fear of what he represents—the foolish hopes Teal'c had once blindly clung to, this path they began together so many years before.

Teal'c swallows against the dryness in his mouth, the tightness in his throat. "These days we live in…this fate… None of this is the burden of a single man, no matter how much we both try to carry it." Ishta would call it the foolishness of men, this need to carry blame, assign fault. No one man is so essential that his decisions alone can shape the destiny of an entire galaxy.

Teal'c tries to believe it.

He suspects O'Neill carries more than his fair share of guilt, but Teal'c understands that it can be no more O'Neill's fault than his own because blaming either of them raises the question of this all being avoidable—that dying free means nothing.

He cannot bring himself to contemplate a universe where that is true, could not bear to live in it.

"We have both done what we must, and will continue to do so," Teal'c says, holding his arm out.

There is a flicker of surprise across O'Neill's face as he takes the offered arm, his grip firm above Teal'c's elbow. "I think you may be the best man I have ever known, Teal'c," he says.

If only that were so.

O'Neill releases his arm, attempting to step back away, but Teal'c holds him in place, his fingers biting into the flesh of O'Neill's arm.

"Teal'c?" O'Neill asks, wariness once more leeching into his expression.

Teal'c meets his eye. "Though she seems strong, you would be a fool to assume all is well with her."

The stony mask slamming down on O'Neill expression is not unexpected, but slightly chilling nonetheless. Teal'c does not retreat from it.

"You will take great care," he insists.

O'Neill's cheek flexes, something dark passing through his eyes. After a long moment, he nods. "I promise."

Teal'c holds his gaze, impressing upon him the importance of this pledge. Eventually appeased that his message has been heard, he nods, dropping his arm. "Then I bid you good journey."

O'Neill steps away, his face clearing, becoming once more inscrutable and unfamiliar. "Yeah, you too, Teal'c."

Teal'c watches O'Neill stride from the room. He can only hope that the two of them will find some form of peace on their journey, rather than simply invent new ways to harm one another.

Just one more thing he can no longer control.

* * *

Carter is waiting for him in the hangar when Jack catches up with her. She looks so small, standing there uncertainly in the large space with nothing more than a small bag clutched in her arms. She's pale, but he recognizes that stubborn angle to her spine, has seen it so many times before.

"Sorry about that," he says, trying to squash that dangerous feeling of familiarity.

She shakes her head, eying him like she hopes to figure out what he and Teal'c had discussed just by looking at him.

"It's fine," he says. "Just a nice chat about old times."

The look Carter shoots him seems aimed at reminding him that mute or not, she is no idiot.

Jack shakes his head, still not quite sure what that whole thing with Teal'c had really been about himself. "It's fine," he repeats, heading for his ship.

She follows him in and he can't help turning to her as she enters, judging her reaction, watching the way she looks around the space.

"It's not much," he says.

It's weird having her here, like he has to somehow account for what he's done with the last five years.

Her eyes come to rest on the small bunk in the back, covered with a quilt he's sure she recognizes. The one he couldn't bring himself to trade. The one small part of her he's allowed himself out here in the emptiness of space.

He's not sure he deserves even that much.

Clearing his throat, he points to a hatch. "That one's empty if you'd like to stow your stuff." He glances at her pathetically small clutch of belongings and tries not to wince.

Deciding to quit while he's ahead, he leaves her to get settled in and heads into the forward compartment to start the pre-flight routine.

He's almost done when she reappears, settling in the other seat with her hands carefully tucked in like she's scared of accidentally bumping something. He wonders if this is her first trip in a spaceship since... He ruthlessly shoves the thought aside.

"This is the _Orfeo_ requesting permission for takeoff," Jack says into his radio.

Carter looks expectantly at him, a question there, but Jack pretends not to notice. If she wants to know, she's going to have to actually ask.

He gets a flash of Daniel's horrified face in his mind, Teal'c's words echoing in his ears. _You will take great care._ But the very fact that Carter is here tells him she's been coddled long enough.

"You know, Carter," he says, his hands still mechanically working their way through the preflight. "This trip probably won't be the cake walk Daniel says it will be."

Peripherally, he catches the wry twitch of her lips. 'It never is,' he can almost hear her thinking. At least he hopes. Because if not, he might just have Carter's voice in his head too. Wonderful. It's going to get crowded.

"I only point it out because if this is going to work," he trails off, clearing his throat. Hell. "You're going to have to be able to speak to me."

He catches quick movement out of the corner of his eye. She's looked sharply at him and he lets her take her time studying him, keeping his eyes straight ahead. There's still time for her to jump out of the ship, to change her mind, to realize this is probably the worst idea they've ever entertained. He waits for it, part of him really, really hoping for it. Eventually she looks away, back out at the hangar.

"I know," she says, voice barely above a whisper.

Jack lets his eyes close for a moment at the strange swamp of emotions conjured by her voice. It's a relief, almost a triumph, but mostly…mostly it reminds him of the last time she spoke in his presence.

_Jack_.

He needs to get over this if they are going to get out of this alive. They both do.

Anhur thinks that's funny as fuck.

_Good luck, sport-o._

Asshole.

The radio crackles. "You're clear to depart, _Orfeo_. The doors are open. Safe journeys."

"Ready?" Jack asks her one last time.

She nods, the gesture halted halfway through as she forces herself to try again. "Yes," she says, her breathing unnaturally even. "I'm ready."

"Okay," he says, forcing his attention back on the controls in front of him. He focuses down on the hum of his ship pulling back against gravity. Guiding them under the huge tunnel rising above them like a grain silo, the ships rises slowly through the layers of earth hiding the outpost from enemy eyes. He engages the cloak because the last thing Omega needs is traffic zooming in and out of the system in the odd chance that someone is actually watching.

Above them, the sky gradually lightens. He can hear Carter's breath quicken, imagines her leaning forward, straining for that first glimpse of space, but keeps his eyes trained straight ahead on the grey walls like looking at her might just make this all disappear. With one last swoop of competing currents, they pull free of the moon, zipping up through the thin atmosphere.

Setting their course, Jack banks away from the brilliance of the system's sun, aiming for the familiar, endless black.

And then it's just the two of them.


	19. No Net Below

**Chapter Two: No Net Below**

Jack shifts in his seat. He's been at the controls for nearly nine hours now. He's done long hauls like this countless times before, but normally he's able to relax into it, let his mind shut off. There's no chance of that today because it's impossible to forget for even a moment that he's not alone. Add this tension that won't abandon his spine to the exhaustion building in his bones and he's fairly well done for.

Carter disappeared back into the hold less than an hour into their journey, mumbling something about getting some rest. He remembers thinking he was pretty impressed how quickly she'd gone from being mute to hiding behind her words. He hadn't bothered trying to call her on it though because walking wide circles around each other is what they do now. He gets it. He's just not sure it makes things easier the way it's supposed to.

Listening intently, Jack thinks he can just make out the sound of her moving around in the hold. "Carter?"

There's a long stretch of silence and he can almost imagine her standing on the other side of the door, trying to decide whether or not to play possum. He's just about convinced she is going to ignore him when the door slides open.

She steps into the edge of his peripheral vision.

"You mind taking the wheel a while?" he asks, rubbing his shoulder.

She doesn't answer. He pushes out of the seat to find her staring at the controls, her hands clasped behind her. If he didn't know any better, he'd say she looked…scared.

"Carter?"

She pulls her eyes away from the controls with visible effort, taking a step back. "I'd better not," she says, but her eyes have already snapped back to the controls.

"You've flown one of these things a dozen times," he reminds her.

She shakes her head. "That was a long time ago."

The ship is equipped with autopilot. It wouldn't be a big deal to just let the ship take care of itself, even if that guaranteed Jack would never really hit deep sleep, one ear constantly open for the inevitable cluster fuck. But something about the way Carter is staring at the controls keeps him from offering it.

"I need some sleep and we don't have time to float in space while I do it," he says.

She doesn't call his bluff and that's just another sign that he's stumbled over something.

"Carter?" he presses.

"I haven't touched any technology," she blurts, looking startled by the confession herself.

What? "You haven't…"

"No."

"Since…?"

"Yeah."

"Ever?"

"No." She's still standing two feet away from the controls, staring at them with a painful sort of intensity.

"Why?"

She shrugs, careless, uninterested. "I just...haven't."

He's no psychologist, just knows people deal with the shit thrown at them in a million different freaky ways. He gets why she didn't speak. That connection's blatant enough for anyone to pick up on. But technology? Anhur was old fashioned, or more precisely, weak and unstable. There had never been fantastic gadgets used on her. Never anything more than Jack's own fists.

He looks down. These hands.

_They worked well enough._

He watches her as she steps up to the back of the chair, her fingers biting into the headrest as she leans into it. She doesn't fear it. She yearns for it.

"Why?" he asks again, voice soft, but insistent.

"I don't know."

He thinks he might. "Is that really what these last five years have been about? Punishing yourself?"

She doesn't look up at him, just continues staring at the controls. "Maybe," she says.

Carter isn't supposed to be unsure. And certainly not supposed to admit it.

"What about you?" she asks, turning it back on him, finally looking up at him. "Have you been punishing yourself?"

"No," he says. And it's true. For him these last five years were about something else entirely. They were about searching, pushing away, keeping too busy to think, trying to stay always one step ahead. Trying to find a way not to be what's he's become.

He doesn't need to punish himself. Not when simply living is punishment enough.

"Are you asking for my permission?" he asks, his chin jutting towards the controls.

He sees the accusation strike home, the truth of it in her eyes before she deliberately looks away. Taking a deep breath, she reaches out and makes contact, sliding into the seat.

"No," she says. "Not anymore."

Just like that, he's dismissed, their first real conversation brought to an abrupt halt.

He watches her for a while, the way her hands move over the controls, stumbling through a long forgotten routine. He can feel the ship faltering slightly under her clumsy movements as she tries to remember, to work it all out.

It's the first time since he woke to find her staring at him in a dark shack on an alien planet all those years ago that he sees anything of industry or grace in her. This is not robotic subsistence, or simple going through the motions, but earnestness and remembrance layered in each motion.

It's a relief, he tells himself.

He lies sleepless in his tiny alcove for hours, feeling the ship smooth out and find equilibrium under her care, and tries not to think too hard about why relief is the last thing he's feeling.

* * *

Vala is fidgeting.

Cam watches the way her hand keeps moving back to her hair over and over again as if having one hair out of place would be catastrophic. If he didn't know any better he'd think she was on her way to a first date, not a meeting with the leader of the Lucian Alliance. Cam tries to judge Jackson's reaction to this, but as usual he just looks like he's trying to ignore her, his eyes instead on the two goons leading them down the hall of Netan's Ha'tak.

Not for the first time, Cam catches himself wishing O'Neill had come with them because Cam may not know Vala Mal Doran all that well, but he has a sinking feeling that fidgeting may just be a prelude to full out fleeing. Without O'Neill, she is the only one who has any idea what exactly they've gotten themselves into, their barometer of disaster, but he's having a hard time reading her.

The goons lead them into an office of sorts, one with a large desk sitting in front of an expansive window. As far as using décor to intimidate, Cam thinks Netan has learned a lot from whatever Goa'uld he stole this ship from.

In front of him, Vala comes to a stop as she enters the room. "Well," she says, hands propped up on her hips. "You wanted Netan and now I've given him to you. Have fun, boys."

Cam reaches for her arm. "Now wait a minute."

She smoothly sidesteps his grab and he sees the steel now, under her flashy good looks. "No time to linger," she says, head tilting to the side. "I have a pressing appointment elsewhere."

Cam glances at Jackson, but he's just got one eyebrow raised as if things aren't already going to shit around them.

Vala slips past him, no doubt heading for the exit and her ship, but stops mid-step, her face losing color. Cam follows her line of sight, and there is the man himself, he supposes, filling the doorway. Netan isn't particularly tall, but what he lacks in height, he makes up in presence. The closely cropped goatee and black uniform might be overly cliché, but the guy hasn't even opened his mouth to speak yet but still the air in the room already seems charged.

"I think you're going to stick around, Vala," Netan says, voice low and unmodulated. There's something terrifying in the way he makes it sound like half request, half prophecy as if daring her to disappoint him.

Vala smiles like the choice to stay had been hers in the first place. "Of course," she demurs, falling back in line next to Jackson. Tilting her head towards him, her smile doesn't falter around the words she hisses. "I'm going to kill Jack. This time I mean it."

Jackson barely acknowledges the death threat, too busy watching Netan like a really fascinating and slightly repulsive puzzle.

"Speak," Netan says, stepping up behind his desk.

Cam refuses to shift his posture, to relinquish one inch of laconic relaxation despite Netan's bark. No need to beat around the bush though. "You've probably heard tale of it—we're looking to take out Anubis. Thought you might want in on it."

"Do I look that foolish to you?"

Of the many words Cam could use to describe Netan, foolish is probably not one of them. And certainly not to his face. Next to him, Vala has gone very still and somehow that just seems more ominous than the fidgeting.

"We've found a way to even the odds, so to speak," Cam says.

For the first time, Netan looks mildly interested. "The drone soldiers?"

Cam smiles. "Not so much a problem for us anymore."

There is a glimmer of something in Netan's eyes, greed or possibility, and in a guy like him, both equally frightening. He lowers himself into his seat behind the desk, signaling a shift in the conversation, and Cam's beginning to suspect that Netan never does anything without premeditation.

"You need ships," Netan surmises. The Lucian fleet is the only kind of its size in the galaxy. The only fleet with a chance in hell of squaring off against Anubis and not getting swatted down like a bug.

Cam nods. "We need ships."

Netan settles into a long silence, his fingers steepled in front of him as if he's mentally running through the variables. That he keeps them standing while he ruminates does not escape Cam's notice. As the minutes stretch long, he hears Jackson give a nearly inaudible sigh of annoyance at the obvious gambit, but Cam is more interested in the way Vala hasn't so much as fidgeted a finger as if her very life depends on it.

Cam doesn't know if this is a test, an abusive demonstration of just who is in the power position in this would-be relationship, or if Netan simply wants the measure of their nerves before he enters an arrangement with them. Cam just watches Vala's studied stillness and copies it as best he can.

After what feels like an hour but can't possibly have been more than ten minutes, Netan lifts his chin. "I think we can come to an arrangement."

Cam relaxes, but next to him, Vala still looks like a rat scrambling to jump a sinking ship.

Rightly so as it turns out, because Netan isn't quite finished. "Of course, you understand that we will require a demonstration of your ability to neutralize the drone soldiers."

"A demonstration?" Cam asks. They have purposely limited testing, as Anubis catching on to a sudden decline in his forces would be catastrophic.

"Yes," Netan says. "One of our outposts fell to Anubis recently. It is held by two drones. It would be an ideal location for a test of your technology."

More like an ideal place for Netan to reestablish his control over an important outpost at no risk to himself. O'Neill hadn't been kidding; this guy is a slimy son of a bitch.

Jackson steps forward to intercede. "We have thoroughly tested it. I can assure you it works."

Netan's eyes narrow as he regards Jackson like an underling who has spoken out of turn. "If we are going to risk siding against Anubis, do you really think we're willing to just take your word for it, Tau'ri?"

"Look," Cam says, stepping in before Jackson's temper can doom them all. "Anubis can't know we're coming. If we start shooting the hell out of his army, he's going to notice."

Vala pinches Cam in the side. Hard. "May I speak to you for a moment?" She gives Netan a sweet smile, her head tilting to the side as if to say, 'What can you do? Silly Tau'ri!'

Netan does not smile back.

The three of them step into the corner and what little privacy it offers. "We can't do this," Cam says.

Vala's voice lowers to a hiss. "Are you insane? We don't agree to this, we don't walk out of here alive." She looks between them. "You understand that, right?"

Before he'd come here, Cam would have said that was just paranoia. Now he's actually met Netan. He shakes his head. "This is impossible. We'd have to move up the attack."

"Then do it," Vala says.

"We can't just--."

She pokes him in the arm. "It seems to me your chance of winning this without the Lucian Alliance is about the same as our chance of walking out of here alive if we say no."

"This isn't exactly the sort of thing you should rush," Cam argues. There are plans and plans, years in the making.

"No," Jackson says, breaking his long silence. "She's right."

Vala looks about as surprised to hear it as Cam is. "Excuse me?" he asks.

"Look, the longer we wait the greater the chance of this leaking to Anubis."

Cam regards Jackson. "And rushing ahead blindly isn't a bit…reckless?"

He shrugs as if reckless is something he can handle. "The plan has been in place for months. We've just been waiting on Rodney."

"Yeah, but--."

"But what?" Jackson snaps, cutting across him. "If what we're really waiting for is some great miracle to save us…well, that's never going to happen. The Asgard are dead, the Tok'ra and Jaffa only a few steps behind. And we're next. It's been _two years_. It's time for do or die."

Cam blinks back at Jackson, a little thrown by the ruthless assessment of their situation. But he's right. They've been doing nothing but treading water as Anubis slowly snuffs them out, one base at a time. Omega and a small handful of unfortified outposts are all that's left of them. If they wait much longer, they won't have critical mass for their insane Hail Mary plan to even put it in motion, let alone pull it off.

Cam drags a hand over his face. "We need five days. Three at the bare minimum."

Jackson nods. "Then lets go get Netan's little outpost back for him."

Reynolds is going to skin him alive.

* * *

It's been three days since Sam recklessly stepped on to the _Orfeo_, locking herself in with Jack. So far they've been carefully rotating around each other, alternating time at the controls of the ship.

The long stretches of silence don't bother her. It's the way Jack doesn't seem to mind them that doesn't seem right. He just appears every eight hours or so, standing next to the chair until she relinquishes the controls. But maybe the most surprising part is that no matter her exhaustion, there is always a part of her that doesn't want to give up her seat, this sense of…control.

It feels like some long missing part of her coming back to life, a surge of blood to a numbed appendage bringing with it the agonizing protest of oxygen deprived flesh. It hurts, physically seems to burn down the length of her body. It makes everything so much sharper, more in focus than they've been for almost as long as she allows herself to remember.

She tries to resent it, to remind herself that this is exactly what she didn't want, but now that she's felt the controls under her hands, the hum of the ship, she can't stand the thought of letting it go again.

Instead she loses herself in the systems, both those vaguely familiar like a half-forgotten childhood story and those new to her, configurations she's never seen. The ship is a twisted hybrid, a fascinating contradiction. At first she wondered where he found a ship like this, but the longer she worked with it, poked through the systems, the more she recognized the distinctiveness to them. It's like a fingerprint, unique to one person. She sees his hand in the chaos and simplicity layered uncomfortably together. There are reckless emergency systems that would no doubt pull him out of precipitously dangerous situations, but not without the even higher probability of crash and burn. Do or die. There's subterfuge here too, cloaks and misdirection and playing possum, all so carefully integrated as to be indistinguishable. Great care and great rashness, all covered with a thin layer of swagger.

She has no idea what is holding it all together.

It frightens her because there's the distinct possibility that one changed variable will be enough to shatter the entire system, to undo everything.

A panel gives off a series of beeps and Sam's body is moving well ahead of her mind, easing them out of hyperspace as they approach their destination.

Jack appears within moments, staring out at the planet ahead of them. "Ah, P9R-872," he says. "I hear it's lovely this time of year."

It's supposed to be a joke, she knows, but like most things these days it doesn't sit right. She feels the echo of other missions and ancient days when everything had been different but it's all battling the sharp edge layered just under his voice.

"It might take some time to locate the structure on the surface," Sam says, doing her part to fall back into routine.

"I'll start the scans," he says, dropping into the other seat and punching commands into an auxiliary control panel.

The ability to fall into pattern, a rhythm of actions and unspoken signals without need for words or reminders, is one of the few things they still have. But then are moments like this when one of them does something the other doesn't expect, a sharp reminder that things are far from normal. She watches his fingers move with ease and practice across complex algorithms and patterns and everything seems to stall out, a hiccup in rhythm throwing everything off-kilter. For a moment, he's a stranger beneath a collection of foreign clothes and the black tortured lines of his tattoo.

But it's still easier to bear than those other moments, the times there seems to be no reason at all for the dangerous shift, just some imaginary switch somewhere triggered, Jack's expression going hard and distant in an instant.

She hears him muttering to himself sometimes, harsh words full of frustration, loathing and exhaustion. She knows that tone, remembers it all too well now from that last day in the forest, his head bowed low over her hands, lips against her knuckles.

_I'm sorry. I am so damn sorry._

And God, just like that it all comes rushing back, the nausea, the utter helplessness, the smothering numbness. Her fingers dig into her thighs, her breath coming short and fast. Things begin to gray out along the edges.

"Carter?" his voice asks from far away.

She shakes her head_. Breathe, Sam. Breathe._ It will pass. It has to pass.

She forces herself to focus on the display in front of them, the flash of information about the surface of the planet. She lets the data and numbers pull her back in from the ledge, like they have countless times before. Reaching out, she scrolls through the information, looking for patterns, and tries to pretend that her hands aren't shaking.

She still feels his eyes on her. "Your ship," she says, trying to shift his focus anywhere else. The one thing she's remembering about words is that sometimes they're even easier to hide behind than silence.

His shoulders tense, but his voice is soft, carefully modulated. "What about it?"

"You did all of this yourself." It's impressive, but speaks of the hard necessities of his life.

"Who knew old dogs could learn new tricks," he says and this is familiar—casual dismissal and downplay, tinged with the slightest edge of self-hatred.

She tries to think what she's learned, but silence doesn't seem quite the useful skill set it once was.

She turns back to the displays.

"Carter--," he starts to say, but there's an insistent beep cutting across him, the ship having found something of interest already.

"Low level power signature in the southern hemisphere," Sam says, skimming the information.

"So there is," Jack says, something indefinable in his voice.

She clears her throat. "Shouldn't we take a closer look?"

He regards her across the cockpit. "That's why you're here, isn't it?"

"Of course," she says, just a beat too late.

He stares at her long enough to let her know he's noticed. "Then I guess you'd better take us down."

She nods, grateful for the task to focus on. _This is why you're here._

The ship swoops and rattles beneath them as it descends into the atmosphere, and she can't tell anymore if her hands are unsteady or if it's just the ship fighting against the incessant tug of gravity.

* * *

The flash of light as the rings deposit them in the compound fades and dies, leaving them standing in the dark. Jack flips on his flashlight, sweeping it across the space. He can feel Carter standing just behind him, both of them straining to hear anything.

Long seconds tick by, but there is no sign of life down here. Jack steps cautiously over the edge of the circle and the room floods with warm light.

"Did you do that?" Carter asks.

He can feel the familiar hum in his bones, like his body somehow knows this place, even if his mind doesn't. "I'm not sure," he says.

The walls are a smooth, uniform gray, sweeping above their heads in a large dome. He can't see any source for the light, like the walls themselves are radiating the glow. Along the base of the dome are open doorways at regular intervals.

Carter looks at him as if waiting for him to decide which direction to try first.

He shakes his head. "This is your party, Carter."

She bites her lip, eyes darting door to door until she settles on one. She steps over the threshold, her flashlight barely penetrating the deep gloom.

Jack follows a few steps behind her, the room lighting itself the moment he walks through the doorway.

Carter glances back over her shoulder at him, but he just shrugs.

This room is far from empty. Floor to ceiling, the place is full of stuff, most of it draped with thin, gauzy cloth, giving it the eerie appearance of a haunted house.

Ahead of him, Carter cautiously pulls a drop cloth off a crate, a small puff of dust rising in the air. Clearly this place has not been touched in ages. Carter absently waves one hand in front of her face, coughing.

"What is it?" Jack asks when all Carter does is stare down at the contents.

"Crystals," she says, holding a short blue one up for him to see.

"Really?" Had they honestly just stumbled upon an Ancient supply store? It seems too good to be true.

Carter holds the crystal up to the light, frowning at it. Dropping it carelessly back into the crate, she starts pulling drape after drape off, enveloping the room in a cloud of dust.

"Carter," Jack objects.

"They're all broken."

"What?" He peers down into the careful row of boxes, each one containing one color of crystal, like someone sorting their recycling.

She digs her hands into a pile of red crystals, picking up a handful and letting them fall back through her fingers like glittering rubies. "Every single one. Burned out or broken."

Apparently Daniel had been right, this place is a depository, as in a trash dump.

"Come on," Carter says, something like excitement underlying her voice. Leave it to Carter to find something worth getting excited over even in a landfill. "Let's check out some of the other rooms."

He doesn't object, following her into the next room and the next. They all have an abandoned air to them, some of them neatly organized like the first, others slightly chaotic as if the inhabitants left in a rush, and everywhere the impenetrable dust of passing time.

He's lost count of rooms when they finally step into one that is more than simple storage space, instead opening up into a larger area with various machines and diagnostic stations. The walls are lined with consoles and funky looking computers that immediately draw Carter's attention.

She's still cautious enough not to start heedlessly poking at the systems, but she's watching the nonsensical displays with something just bright and familiar enough to be painful to watch.

Jack forces himself to look away from her and that's when he sees it, half-hidden behind a shelf. He thinks maybe he's been hearing it this whole time, whispering at the back of his mind. Like it's just been waiting for him—his answer.

"You know," he says, slowly making his way across the room. "I think I know an even better way to get rid of Anubis."

"What?" Carter asks, voice distracted.

Jack shoves the shelf aside, the wall leaping to life as he steps near, pliant metal arms reaching and pulling him close. He thinks there might be a scream from somewhere, the sound of something falling, but the next thing he knows, he's lying on the floor, Carter leaning over him. Her face is pale and splotchy in places, her hands hovering near his face, but not touching as if she's scared of the contact.

"Why?" she demands, her voice cracking. "_Why_ would you do that?"

Maybe because he doesn't need her permission anymore either.


	20. Greater Than

**Chapter Three: Greater Than**

There were actually four drones holding the outpost, not two, and Daniel wonders if Netan planned on getting them killed as an alternative to joining their dangerous little rebellion. A win-win for him.

"You can't really be surprised," Vala says, fingers running through her hair, working at a particularly bad tangle that seems to be her greatest injury from their run-in with the drones.

Daniel watches the industrious work of her hands as she twists her hair back into two tight buns on either side of her head like some bizarro-world version of Princess Leia. You know, if she'd been a thief. A thief with disturbingly accurate shooting skills.

"You mean you suspected Netan would spring something on us like this?" Cam demands, still pretty pissed to find they've been thrown to the sharks.

Vala's hands pause, one eyebrow lifting as she regards Cam like a petulant preschooler from her perch on a rock.

"Right," Cam says. "If he wasn't lying or manipulating us, he wouldn't be Netan."

Vala grins, something wide and practiced that shows all her teeth. "And they say Tau'ri are dull-witted."

Cam rolls his eyes, turning his attention to Daniel. "You okay, Jackson?"

Dull pain radiates down Daniel's left side, but rolling his shoulder he can tell nothing's broken. He also doesn't have a giant hole in him from the drone's weapon, so there's that. It had been a near thing, he thinks, watching Vala pluck a twig from her jacket with a frown.

She'd hip-checked him out of the way of a blast, slamming him to the ground and for a split moment she'd been laying flat on top of him, looking a little surprised herself. Then she'd reached for his gun, shimmying off him with a lascivious grin. "Sorry, handsome, no time for play." Popping to her feet, she finished off the third, unexpected drone with aplomb while Cam took care of the fourth.

"I'm fine," Daniel says. He turns to Vala. "Thank you for that, by the way."

She brushes a hand down her arm. "Just self-preservation, darling. You were in my way."

Cam muffles a snicker at the disinterest in her voice, but Daniel doesn't bother being offended. She is, in many ways, the most convoluted, incomprehensible person he's ever met.

"What's her story?" Daniel had once dared to ask Jack, right after Vala delivered their weapons.

Jack had stared after her departing back. "Her own," he'd tossed back, his normally tight-lipped self, but there'd been something in the way he looked at her, something that took Daniel a while to decipher as camaraderie and reluctant affection.

It wasn't like Jack to trust easily, now more than ever.

Vala pushes to her feet, gesturing at the drones. "You don't mind if I collect my fee, do you, boys?"

"Be our guest," Cam says.

She starts stripping the armor off the first drone with an industry and economy of motion that says she already knows exactly what will earn the highest price on the open market.

"What do we do with her?" Cam asks, his voice lowering.

Daniel crosses his arms over his chest. Vala knows too much to let her walk off now. But the alternative is taking her to Omega, and that is way too much information to put in her hands.

They have two options, really. Lock her up until this is done, or trust her. It's fairly obvious which is the right answer. He thinks he can see it in her posture that she's waiting for it, that she can feel it coming, despite how hard she's trying to look like she's ignoring them. Maybe she's already planning her escape route.

It all comes down to why she helped them. The obvious answer is for money, or possibly because Jack asked her and there is a more complicated tangle of debts and history between them than Daniel can even begin to guess at. Neither of those explanations is something they can bank on to keep her loyal, or even at the very least, quiet.

Daniel walks over to her, Cam right on his heels.

Daniel watches her work for a while, but he's already accepted that she is one puzzle that simple observation will never crack. "Do you care if Anubis is defeated or not?" he asks.

"Sure," she says, not lifting her eyes from the drones. "Why not."

She's not even trying to sound sincere. He crouches down next to her. "I'd seriously just like to know what you think."

There's a flash of something flinty and dangerous in her eyes when she looks up at him. She shrugs. "One tyrant's pretty much the same as the next."

It seems flippant and disingenuous, but he thinks there is way more honesty layered in there than anything she's ever said to him before. "Better the devil you know," he surmises.

"Some might say." She's packing away her booty from the fallen drones now, seemingly at ease, but he can feel the tension building in her. He thinks she must be preparing herself for the drop of the other shoe.

"Here's the thing," he says. "We'd like your help if you're willing to give it."

She takes her time absorbing that, the various items stripped from the drone disappearing into crannies of an outfit that would seem to harbor none.

"And if I'm not?" she eventually asks, her eyes darting to Cam standing over them with his arms crossed. "You going to lock me up?"

"No," Daniel says without pause, and maybe the answer to this problem is easier than he thought.

He sees Cam's eyebrows pop up, his mouth opening, but Daniel just firmly shakes his head. He thinks if they don't give her this choice, then maybe they don't deserve to take Earth back.

Vala is peering at Daniel. "So you're saying I can just get up and walk away if I want to. You won't stop me?"

"We won't stop you," Daniel confirms, ignoring Cam's pointed glare.

She sits back on her heels, looking that strange combination of serene and calculating that is unique to her. "Okay then. What exactly do you boys have in mind?"

* * *

Sam is stuck.

Whatever momentum she may have been riding—curiosity, excitement, delusion—it's drained away during the silent day and a half spent haunting this dusty, abandoned place. She's got the push of one nightmare growing behind her, slamming her up against the immovable past that has materialized in front of her.

Faced with the collision, she honestly doesn't know what else to do than stand in the doorway, her hand latched onto the threshold like a lifeline. She thinks a step in either direction will damn her. Forwards or backwards, it doesn't matter.

It's ridiculous and weak, but that doesn't stop the buzz building in her ears, the way the grey walls are blurring out around her. She doesn't know how long she stands there, feet immobile, back straight enough to snap, fingers clinging to the architecture like her life depends on it, when his voice finally penetrates the fog.

"Carter," Jack says, his voice echoing behind her. "I've been calling you. Is your radio off?"

She doesn't turn to look at him, still staring into the room in front of her.

"Carter?" he asks, stepping in next to her. "What's-." His eyes follow her gaze, settling on the object in front of her.

She feels his gaze skim her face. "Is that-?"

She nods.

Like everything else here, it's covered in dust, cracked by age, tools surrounding it like it's been abandoned mid-diagnostic. It doesn't look exactly like the Goa'uld version, no gold, no glyphs, just smooth modern lines, but she would recognize it anywhere.

A sarcophagus.

"Why don't we take a little break," Jack says, his voice cautious and careful like talking a jumper down from a ledge. She wants to laugh at the backwardness of that. She's not the one who jumped.

"Back on Cimmeria," she says, the words slow and almost robotic, but impossible to hold back. "You were so angry at everything. But me…I was just numb."

He'd been right about her, that heinous thing he accused her of so many years before. _Do you miss it?_ Some sick part of her _had_ missed it, because if he was breaking her bones, or touching her skin…at least she was feeling _something_.

"Carter," he says, his discomfort with this topic clear. Normally she might care, but everything is different now, different since he stuck his head in the Ancient repository. She feels like she's being forced to watch him kill himself right in front of her.

He'd just gone back to exploring the compound like nothing happened. She sees it though, the way he's lighter now, sees it but doesn't want to believe what it might mean.

She digs the heel of her hand into her sternum, rubbing at the hollow ache there. "I haven't…felt things since the sarcophagus. Not the way I used to."

Her eyes run along the lines of the machine, something like longing in her stomach. Sarcophagus—the eater of flesh. She knows why they call it that.

"You still crave it," he says, awe and horror mingling uneasily in his voice. He'd just thought this was fear, the overwhelming power of memories rushing back holding her here, but the truth is so much worse.

She can't look at him, can't look away from the machine. She just feels her eyes brighten with tears and shame as the familiar tug works at her. "Every day," she confesses.

It would be so easy to just give in, to take the oblivion it offers. He's done it, why shouldn't she? She closes her eyes, her body swaying slightly. "Sometimes I think he killed me that day. The day he took the sarcophagus away. Because this isn't really life."

"Is that why you came back?"

She thought she came back to prove something, to somehow make up for the guilt building inside her, the thought that maybe, just maybe none of this would have happened if they'd been there. If they'd just gone home.

But maybe her real reason is something else all together.

When Jack left her on Cimmeria, that numbness was all she had. She let five years pass in a haze because she was too terrified to defrost. She doesn't know if it was fear it would all just hurt too much, or maybe that he had been right…that she wasn't strong enough to survive this.

She came back because she needs to feel again, even if it's just pain or disappointment or guilt, because it's _something_. Because the alternative is letting him win. Again.

"What do you want to do?" he asks.

She wants to climb inside and never come back out. Wants to let that light wash away the gnawing ache in her chest, dull the fact that she's watching Jack die in slow motion. Again. She wants to make the memories fade to nothing but indistinct phantoms that will never be able to touch her ever again.

She wants to forget. God, more than anything she just wants to forget. Climbing inside would be so easy.

She hears the rip of velcro, tearing her eyes away just long enough to see Jack pull a block of explosive out of a small pack.

It's the only answer. She knows this. Destroy it or let it destroy her. But getting close enough to it to do it, she doesn't think she'd pass that test. "I don't think…" She shakes her head. "I can't."

He does it for her, putting the small charge inside the machine against the smooth white walls, and she feels panic rising in her throat. She can't let him-. God, no. She takes a step to stop him, only her fingers' unrelenting grip on the doorway keeping her in place.

He doesn't destroy it though, instead returning to her side, holding out the detonator to her. She understands. He won't do this for her.

"Take it, Carter," he says, his voice soft, but insistent.

This is why you really came, she reminds herself. Because she had to see, see if she'd crumble into nothing the first time something challenged her. She _yearned_ for it, this chance to really test herself. She tries not to wonder what it means that of everyone, he was the only one to see it, the only one not focused on packing her away in yet more cotton. She'd been drowning, and he'd seen it when no one else had.

But God, she thinks, fighting to get her pulse under control, feeling a trickle of cold sweat work its way down the back of her neck. This might just be worse.

He's standing close now, too close. She feels him slip the detonator into the palm of her free hand. Her fingers curl around it and just holding it makes her want to vomit.

She shakes her head. "I can't-."

"Carter," he interrupts, something in his voice finally forcing her eyes up and away from the machine. She wonders how he can look so calm when everything is going to hell around them. "You're one of the strongest people I've ever known."

_He doubts you are strong enough to survive._

It's a lie. The way he's looking at her tells her that.

Keeping her eyes locked on his, she takes a deep breath and pushes the button.

She feels the small blast like a blow to the chest, the impact of the knowledge of what she's just done, what she's given up almost felling her. His gaze is the only thing keeping her upright.

"You did it," he says, pride and awe all bundled up with every other dangerous feeling tangled between them.

She pulls her eyes away from him, staring instead at the charred remains. She feels the pain echoing through her body, the ache of her fingers as they grip the jamb. _Feels_ it.

She lets go.

She doesn't fall down.

* * *

"Let me get this straight," Reynolds says. "You took out four drones in front of a multitude of witnesses to keep Netan from having you killed, showing our hand and forcing us to move up the time line of our attack to mere days, and on top of this, you've brought Vala Mal Doran back to our last, top secret outpost, a woman who would as soon rob us blind as give us a straight answer?"

Daniel wonders if he should point out that Netan has also proven himself to be an ally they can't trust, but Reynolds is looking irate enough. "Sounds about right," he says instead.

"We also got Netan to pledge his ships," Cam points out in a misguided attempt to find the silver lining.

Reynolds doesn't even dignify that with a response, dragging a hand over his face.

To be honest, Daniel doesn't think Reynolds is really all that pissed. He thinks he's relieved to have the decision out of his hands.

Reynolds looks over at Teal'c, maybe to gauge his reaction to this new development.

Teal'c's eyes dart to Daniel's and he sees the same understanding there. This is a push they needed. "It would seem it is time to contact our allies," Teal'c says.

"Shouldn't we call back Sam?" Rodney interjects.

"I do not believe that will be necessary," Teal'c says before Daniel can even decipher the denial rising in his throat at Rodney's suggestion.

Daniel nods, a beat of understanding between them as Daniel backs Teal'c up. "Who knows, they may find something important there."

It's just an excuse not to involve them though. Teal'c knows this as well as Daniel. They don't need one more ship so badly that they have to pull them back. They've already given enough. If the worst happens, at least they will be safe.

Daniel thinks he may finally get it, why Jacob lied to them all for so long.

"And the Lucian?" Reynolds prompts.

Cam nods, acknowledging that they've solved one problem only through the introduction of a new one. "That's just something we'll have to worry about later."

"If we live," Daniel tacks on.

"Always such the bottle of sunshine," Rodney complains.

"So. Three days?" Cam asks, all of them turning to Reynolds for the final say.

Reynolds blows out a breath, pushing off the edge of his desk. "Three days," he confirms, nothing but unbending certainty left in his voice.

No more waiting.

* * *

Jack's had a string of words echoing in his mind for a while now. He thinks it might be the name of this place.

_Cum tacent clamant_.

He wanders the halls with the words pinging against his skull, his feet following a pattern indiscernible to him. Not that he tries too hard to figure it out either. For once he's happy to let the noise unraveling in his mind take him wherever it wants.

It's a lot more interesting this time, now that he knows what's happening and doesn't particularly care where it leads.

Sometimes he thinks he sees a shadow of movement out of the corner of his eye. Whenever he turns to get a better look, it disappears like a glimmer, a hallucination not meant to be seen straight on. So he stops trying. He lets it hover, following the specter from room to room, down hallway after hallway just to see where it leads.

This is how he finds the room.

It's empty, the walls the same flat grey as the rest of the compound. Overhead though, is a high domed ceiling that disappears into the shadows. As Jack steps inside, the darkness lingers.

He almost trips over the small pedestal in the middle of the room, his hand slapping down on top of it to keep his balance. The metal hums to life under his palm, pinpricks of light appearing in the air above him.

They rotate slowly, and Jack knows what this place is: a map of the galaxy. His eyes graze familiar locations and formations. It seems to respond to his thoughts, flawlessly zooming in on Earth's location, the planet growing large in the center of the room. It looks so tranquil hanging there, and he feels an unexpected ache for a world he'd thought he was fine leaving behind a hell of a long time before.

He reaches up a hand to touch the light, the room spinning unexpectedly as he does, voices and images flying past too fast to comprehend, building like a cacophony in his mind. He feels his knees hit the floor as his body buckles under the pressure.

_Why chase them…thought you might want in...it's time for do or die…no time for play...three days…three days…_

_They will come to me._

Jack slaps his hands to his ears in a vain attempt to silence the noise, the tension building in his head. It's threatening to split everything wide open when he sees her. A woman stands calmly on the other side of the space, staring down at him. She seems to have bled out of the very walls themselves, like maybe she's always been here, her robes the same nondescript gray as the space around her.

She takes one earnest step toward him, her face a mask of concern and fear. She doesn't speak, but he hears the words echoing in his mind as if she's shouted them.

_Alea iacta est_.

He doesn't understand.

Her eyes flick upwards. He looks up at Earth calmly hovering above them and without warning it shatters in a ball of fiery light that burns into his retinas, lingering long after the light fades into nothing but dust trailing to the floor in the inky blackness.

"I don't understand," Jack manages to squeeze out of his throat.

The faded light still seems to burn brightly in the eyes of the silent woman. Behind her Jack can just make out the movement of more figures fanning out behind her like a shimmering wave. She takes one stumbling step back, fading into the shadows.

"Wait!"

"Jack?" Carter asks from behind him.

With her voice, the room shifts, once more empty and calm, the stars rotating quietly in the heavens. Jack is still standing on his feet, one hand pressed to the pedestal. Like none of it ever happened.

Only it did. And now it's there, perfectly formed in his mind, bright and whole and simple like someone has reached in and planted it in his brain.

_Alea iacta est_.

He knows then, knows they can't win. They have no idea what they are walking into.

He turns to Carter. "We have to go back to Earth."

Her eyes lift to the tiny worlds floating behind him, her jaw tightening. "Yeah," she agrees, like maybe they've always been building towards this.

It's well past time to go home.


	21. All We Are

**Chapter Four: All We Are**

Sam shoves a box against the far wall of the _Orfeo's_ cargo hold, not bothering to try to make sense of the jumble of objects tucked inside it.

She has a careful litany of stages repeating in her mind, constantly tracking Jack's slow degradation as the Ancient knowledge unspools in his mind. He's slipped once or twice already, foreign words seeping into his vocabulary, but only when he's distracted or exhausted.

Three or four days more, she calculates.

The most telling milestone is the fact that he's moved into the mad packing phase. He's filling box after box with objects from the compound, muttering that they will be important. She doesn't bother to ask why, not wanting to see the frustrated tic of his hands as he tries to latch on to anything concrete. She thinks he doesn't even really know what or why he's doing anything anymore.

Something happened to him in the observatory, turning his apathetic listlessness into a whirlwind of movement. She's not sure which phase is worse because maybe he's not disappearing anymore, but that just means that he's burning out faster.

With a sigh, Sam lifts another box to the towering collection and tries to focus her mind on the developing game of tetris that is his cargo hold, and not his crumbling mind. He's gathered enough stuff to take with them to stretch his ship to the limits, even counting the rather cleverly concealed compartments that she can only assume he uses for smuggling.

She's moving some cargo around, trying to consolidate to make room, when she pulls the top off a large crate in the corner that seems strangely isolated from all the others. A flash of color catches her eye, and staring down at the contents, she tries to reconcile what she's seeing but it just doesn't add up. There are layers of fabric and boxes of foodstuff she recognizes far too well from the supplies her father brought to her like clockwork over the years.

What are they doing on Jack's ship?

Reaching in, she pulls out a glass jar of preserves, the label carefully handwritten.

Her favorite.

She'd been willing to see the quilt on Jack's bunk as an aberration, something her father had passed on, but in light of the crate open in front of her she's finally realizing it is so much more.

She carefully secures the lid back in place.

* * *

"Jack?" Sam asks, wandering into the room furthest back in the compound. "I've loaded everything on your list."

He doesn't acknowledge her, intent on a bag he's packing. For a panicked moment she wonders if it's already begun, if his mind is already slipping away. She takes a step closer to him. "Jack?"

"When did I become Jack?"

Her heart stutters in her chest and she doesn't know if it's because she's relieved he can still speak or terror at his words. "What?"

For a moment she thinks—_prays_—he's going to take the question back, to shrug it off, but then he turns, nothing uncertain in his gaze. "When did you start calling me Jack?"

He's staring back at her and she knows she should turn around and not have this conversation, but he's got a ticking time bomb in his head and her feet just won't move. She wants to hate him in that moment because he's heading for the grave and somehow seems to think that gives him the right to ask these questions, to rip things open on his way out.

He doesn't have the right.

But then she thinks of a carefully packed crate, years of watching and caring from afar, what that must have cost him.

This is it. No more chances.

"The day…" She breaks off, flinching as her voice cracks over the word.

"Right," he says, his voice going flat. He turns back to the panel in front of him. "Of course."

She knows what he's thinking, but he's wrong.

She debates letting him keep thinking it was the day Anhur switched tactics, that first time, a first time neither of them can get back, but for her, of all the traumas that is not the one her mind lingers on, the one that she can't scrape away no matter how hard she tries. She'd already been so far gone by then, after he took away the sarcophagus.

She wonders if the truth is worse.

"No," she says. "It was before that."

He became Jack the day she stopped thinking of him as the Colonel. The day she stopped following his orders, spoken or unspoken. The day she broke that bond.

She swallows hard, willing the foreign press of tears to leave her be, for the power of the memory to keep its distance. None of that has worked for weeks now and she almost wishes for silence again if it wouldn't be such a capitulation.

"The knife," she forces herself to say and she can almost feel the breaks in her bones, the stickiness of blood on her skin.

She should have killed him. He wanted it. She knew that, despite his inability to speak. She _knew_ it.

He did it for her once, killing her rather than leaving her captive to something, but she just couldn't do it. She thinks if he'd been just her CO, if it was just about Colonel O'Neill…she thinks she could have done it. But Jack…not Jack. And that's what is unforgivable.

He has his back to her, his spine stiff and his fingers motionless on the pack in front of him. "Okay," is his only response.

She doesn't know what that means.

Opening a small hatch in front of him, he exposes a giant orange-colored cylinder that looks like it's made of stained glass. He clicks on his flashlight, and Sam follows suit. He pulls the cylinder free with a swift twist and a tug, the compound shuddering into darkness around them.

"We're going to need this," he says.

She believes him.

* * *

_She's limp against the chains, shoulder dislocated, jaw angled unnaturally under the blooming bruises, chest completely still._

_Jack wants to close his eyes, but has no control. The thing wants him to watch. Always watching._

_Even Jack isn't ready for her sudden resurgence from death and he's never been more in awe of her. Not even death can stop her. The blade she wields is cool and sharp against his neck and if he could, he would weep in gratitude. She will end this._

_But there's something in her face. Hesitation. And a flicker of something even worse, because the snake sees it too._

"_Do it!" he screams wordlessly._

_But she can't hear and he sees the moment her resolve falters, the instant she cracks._

_He hears her soft apology and knows she says it both for leaving him captive and for what the snake will force him to do to her in retaliation. Already it is feeding him images, ideas it has for her._

_Nausea roils around his phantom stomach. He tries not to look, not to feel her blood flowing over his hands._

_Part of him hates her for her weakness._

Jack jerks awake, suffering a moment of disorientation as he absorbs the small alcove around him, the familiar hum of his ship at full speed.

Right, he thinks, his head dropping back to his thin pillow. They are racing towards Earth, chasing an event Jack can't put in words, outrunning the ticking time bomb in his brain.

There aren't any Asgard left. Who's supposed to save him?

He's going to die. He knows this.

There aren't a lot of regrets anymore, just the surety that this, _finally_, is the right path. But there's one last thing to do before his words disappear all together.

Pushing out of bed, he moves towards the front of the ship.

Carter is at the controls.

Her transformation this last week has been startling. Not that he would have expected any less from the Carter he'd known. Only she's not the woman she once was. She probably never will be, but she's solid and focused and stubborn enough not to back down from conversations she would probably rather never have.

She doesn't need him or anyone looking out for her anymore. It makes leaving a lot easier. He just doesn't want to leave her clinging to a burden that never existed in the first place.

"He had a sarcophagus," he says.

Carter jumps at the unexpected voice as much as the words, he thinks. "What?" she asks, not looking back, hands tight on the controls.

There's no time for pulling punches. "Anhur."

She winces at the name. "I know," she snaps, and he imagines she's thinking about it again, the white light, the hum, the blissful blankness. She knows better than anyone that Anhur had a sarcophagus, but she's still not getting it, not making the connection that the Carter she used to be would have already seen long before.

He waits patiently for her to look at him. When she finally manages to lift her gaze to his, he stares back at her, willing her to understand.

"He had a sarcophagus," he repeats, each word carefully enunciated.

It finally seems to slam into her, her face paling and her breath catching. "He had a sarcophagus," she repeats.

He wouldn't have stayed dead, even if she'd managed it.

She seems to fold inward, the tension leaving her spine. Her empty hands tremble in her lap as she stares down at them, and Jack sees the tears that struggle free splashing on her open palms.

For five years of built up silence and anger and guilt, she falls apart so quietly. A few tears and a bowed back, her hair falling forward over her face. It makes it all so much more painful to watch.

He hesitates, always hesitating, but finally gets his feet to move, crossing the space. Maybe this was just an inevitable conversation, or maybe it's the knowledge of time running out on all of this, but he gently turns the chair until she's facing him and crouches down in front of her. He reaches out to touch her face, slow enough for her to pull away, to object, but all she does is carefully track the movement.

He finally makes contact, his thumb brushing away the tears, and she doesn't flinch or pull back, her hands open and still on her lap.

She closes her eyes briefly and then she's looking at him, and he can't believe what he's seeing, some tiny, slender thread of that dangerous truth still in her eyes.

"How can you do that?" he asks, his voice hoarse.

"What?"

"Look at me and not see him."

"Jack," she says, her face crumpling. "You know why I couldn't do it. You _know_."

They stare at each other and Jack still has the memory fresh in his mind, that tiny moment that betrayed them both to Anhur, doomed them to torture even more insidious. But what he can't remember anymore are the rationalizations they'd used, the excuses for staying on the same team, despite the truth they could no longer ignore. Had he really thought it wouldn't matter? Denial and repression hadn't saved them.

He pulls his hand back. "It was my fault," he says. "All of it."

"No," she denies.

"I was your commander."

She shakes her head. "It was my choice too. I knew the risks."

His jaw tightens. None of that changes the most damning fact of all. "I wanted you and he knew it."

She flinches, the gesture involuntary, but bone deep. "It's not the same," she says, her voice barely above a whisper.

"If I hadn't-."

"No," she interrupts, refusing to back down on this one thing. "He was a Goa'uld. He would have hurt us either way."

Jack pushes to his feet, taking a few agitated steps away from her.

From the first moments of blending, Anhur had been convinced Jack was fighting him, blocking him somehow. That was power Jack never had. It was only ever Anhur's weakness working against him, his inability to make sense of Jack's knowledge, to make use of it. That's what the endless routine of her death had been about—punishment, an attempt to break the host, to make it all make _sense_. At least until the snake's twisted mind became obsessed with something else all together.

Anhur hadn't really seen Carter before the day she dared lift a knife against him. She—a mostly dead female slave, the least important being of all—daring to threaten the life of her god. It shook Anhur, splitting everything open, this bond the humans had that he could never understand. From then on, she was _all_ he saw.

Scared, scared little god, just scrambling to stay alive, getting lost in his own sick games.

Jack swallows hard against the bitterness rising in his throat. "Or maybe he would have just killed you, if he didn't think there was something worth keeping you alive for."

Carter's voice is small when she finally speaks. "Would that have been better? Would you rather I was dead?"

He still has it all fresh in his mind, every heinous detail. He turns to look at her. "Rather than what he made me do to you? _Yes_."

She doesn't flinch back from the vehemence in his voice, rather holding her ground, her back straightening. "Is that why you did it?" she asks. "Why you stuck your head in that thing?"

He stares back at her, feeling like he's watching a train wreck in progress, but unable to look away. "What?"

She licks her lips, forcing out the one question they've been dancing around since this all began. "Because you would rather be dead?"

He doesn't answer, but he doesn't think she really needs him to. She stares back at him as if willing him to deny it. He can see the terrible realization building in her face as the silence stretches long between them.

She understands now. Finally.

It's never been about the knife. It's always been Cimmeria.

Always Cimmeria.

For a moment he thinks she's going to fall apart under the weight of this realization, but then he watches the stunned horror wipe from her face in the span of a moment, everything shutting off. She's blank again. So painfully blank.

"Okay," she says, something like a promise. She pushes to her feet, and when he looks, her hands are steady. "Okay. That's all I needed to know."

She walks away.

_Finally_.


	22. Prelude

**Chapter Five: Prelude**

At the Omega Site, the walls hum and whisper.

Vala lies in her room that isn't quite a prison cell—yet only all the more dangerous for it—and listens. She prefers the walls that are easily seen and worked around to the ones secretly woven and set in words and expectations. The open doorway seems to ask for trust, and it's always the ones who feel the need to ask who deserve it the least.

Or possibly the Tau'ri simply believe they have the upper hand.

Either way, it makes them fools. That's comforting in a way the open doorway is not.

After all, only fools would adopt alien technology without truly understanding it. She supposes on the surface the integration of multiple alien technologies at the Omega site is a visual reminder of their alliances, the forces they will attempt to bring to bear against Anubis. But for all their egalitarian idealism, the Tau'ri haven't taken the time to know their allies as well as their enemies. Trust may just be their ultimate downfall. Poetic, but inevitable.

Take the Tok'ra, for example. The very species to provide the crystal structure used for the basis of this compound. They are an arrogant race uncaring, or simply incapable, of understanding the basic premise of privacy. For a race seeped in subterfuge, they understand nothing of secrets among their own kind.

So it is that these pretty crystal walls contain a certain useful property the Tok'ra would never think to identify as a flaw. But it _is_ a weakness, this crystalline structure that builds and compounds upon natural veins of various densities. One that with the right equipment, some patience, and a little privacy, can turn the walls themselves into a surveillance system, carrying sound great distances.

Vala has all of these things in abundance.

And so she sleeps with the walls whispering in her ear, the Tau'ri secrets—mundane and otherwise—trickling into her mind syllable by syllable. She has always believed the true nature of a race is to be found not in their actions or intentions, but in their lies—the secrets they keep. The Tau'ri are open before her.

"Take Vala with you."

Her eyes snap open, Colonel Reynolds's voice vibrating against her eardrum, raising above all the other chatter. She adjusts the control the barest amount, zeroing in on the conversation.

"What?" Daniel's voice this time, sharp with confusion and annoyance.

"I want someone to have an eye on her at all times. She knows way too much."

They have no idea, she thinks, pulling the bud from her ear with a yank.

It's not quite a prison door finally appearing, but the first creaking approach nonetheless. That's okay. She's prepared for this, already has five paths out of this convoluted base worked out. All she's waiting for is the excuse.

When Daniel finally appears twenty minutes later, he's still looking harried and annoyed. But certain. Ruthlessly so. Always so sure of the path he set them on that day in Netan's chamber. She doesn't know yet if this is delusion in the name of self-preservation or actual belief. She doubts she'll have the chance to find out either way.

"They want you to stay with me for the duration of the fight," he explains without preamble.

Vala swings up to a seated position, wondering if he'll notice that for all intents and purposes her bags are already packed. "Why?" she asks.

His eyebrows scrunch over the top of his glasses. "So I can keep an eye on you."

She rolls his honesty around on her tongue, trying to taste the hidden barbs. "They don't trust me."

"No," he admits, no apology in sight.

She reminds herself that honesty isn't everything. It probably just means he doesn't think she's important enough to lie to. She swings her feet back and forth over the edge of the bed, working variables, but really waiting for that _click_. That tickle at the back of her brain that has kept her alive this long.

Daniel's staring at her as if tensing for a fight.

She isn't quite ready to give him one, she decides. "Fair enough," she says, gestures carefully careless, spine fluid as she hops to her feet.

His shoulders relax. His mistake.

She grabs her bag and slips out into the hall with him, eying the people rushing back and forth. The Tau'ri plan put in motion.

They pass by one of her exit paths on the way, and she reminds herself that once they are away from the Omega Site, it may only become more difficult to slip away. Her steps slow. She reaches for the wall, her fingers sliding over the crystal, feeling the hum build and change as people shuffle from space to space.

Daniel pauses, looking back at her. "Are you coming?"

She glances at his face, the position of his hands, studying the angle of his spine as he stands there. Strolling past her exit, she takes his arm. "Where to, handsome?"

He sighs, shrugging off her arm and aiming them towards the hangars.

She'll take the Tau'ri's open doors for now, let them think it means something. All she really needs are their walls.

Their idealism will take care of the rest.

* * *

Cam flattens himself against the wall, narrowly avoiding getting run over by a cart stacked with crates careening down around the corner.

"Whoa there," he chastises the out of breath young man behind the wheel. Kicking Anubis' ass is going to be tricky enough without maiming each other during the prep phase. "Slow down."

"I'm sorry, sir," the kid says, face flushed red under the beads of sweat. "Dr. McKay said these crates needed to get to the gate ASAP and if they were late, I could deal with Teal'c's…displeasure." He goes a bit pale at the thought, and Cam doesn't entirely blame him.

He waves him on, making a mental note to remind McKay not to mess with the assistants' heads. "Just try not to kill anyone, okay?"

"Sure thing!" the kid calls back over his shoulder as he disappears down the hall with absolutely no less velocity than before.

Cam shakes his head and crosses over to McKay's office, banging his fist on the door. "Hop to it, McKay. Project Santa Claus is a go."

McKay looks up from his desk, giving him a harried look. "I can't believe Reynolds let you give the mission such a ridiculous name."

Cam shrugs, not really feeling the need to have this argument yet again. "Come on. We've got a few chimneys to hit before the big day."

"_Chimneys to hit_?" McKay sputters, looking like his head is going to implode with righteous indignation. His hands get all flappy, and that's just never a good thing. "We're talking about beaming cargo onto an _occupied_ world from a _cloaked_ ship without being detected or blown up! It's nearly impossible!"

Cam blinks calmly back at him. "And you think getting little Betty Sue's pony down a chimney was easy?"

That manages to temporarily stun McKay into silence, and Cam mentally tallies a point in his column. As usual though, McKay doesn't stay silent for long.

"You are completely bent, you know that?" he says. "I don't even know why I bother trying anymore."

"Because you're a misunderstood genius and that's your lot in life," Cam says. "Now grab your stuff and let's go."

McKay continues to grumble to himself as he darts around the room, packing up his necessary equipment. Of course, McKay's definition of the word necessary has always been unique.

"That's it!" Cam says after ten minutes of watching him stockpile everything he owns. "We are out of here _now_."

Physically steering McKay out into the hall, Cam takes the precaution of looking both ways. These days you can never be too careful.

"I thought we were in a hurry?" McKay snipes.

Cam ignores him, stepping out into traffic and making a beeline for the hangars. They're maybe halfway there when someone calls out his name.

"Colonel Mitchell!"

Cam twists around to locate the source, spying Kate Ortiz working her way across the hall.

"Kate," he says, giving her a smile. He glances at the small pack over her shoulder, sparing a moment to compare it to the fifty-ton steamer truck currently threatening to break McKay in half. "You heading out?"

She nods. "I'm with the Valedian fleet."

"Ah," he says, shifting slightly when she gives him an expectant look, like waiting to hear where he's being deployed. "I'm…somewhere else."

Her eyes sparkle with humor. "Top secret mission," she says, tapping the side of her nose. "Gotcha."

He grins. "Something like that."

"Well, in that case, I guess I'll see you on Earth," she says, holding out her hand.

He takes her hand, giving her a crooked grin. "It's a date."

Her eyebrow pops up, and Cam feels his face flush. "What I meant, of course-."

Kate tugs on his hand, lifting up to press a kiss to his cheek. "Just when I thought you'd never ask."

"Really?" he asks, only belatedly realizing that sounding that incredulous probably dents his cool just a little.

Her smile softens, something sobering in the look she gives him. "Good luck, Cam."

He squeezes her fingers. "You too."

She steps away then, glancing at McKay and giving him a nod as if she is not even remotely bothered that he has been standing there avidly watching them. "Doctor McKay."

McKay stares after her as she walks away, his mouth hanging open.

"Not a word, McKay," Cam grumbles. "Not a word."

McKay hikes his pack up with a grunt. "You mean like 'cute'? Or maybe just 'pathetic'?"

Cam plants a hand in the middle of his pack, pushing him down the hallway. "Move it, Rudolph."

"Oh, for God's sake."

* * *

There's something hard in Vala's eyes as she surveys the planet they've just landed on. "Who are we meeting again?" she asks, her voice casual as if she's simply forgotten the information, and not that he's never told her.

"We're meeting up with the infiltration strike force," he says again, still sidestepping the simple inquiry. He doesn't really know why he's being so obscure, other than the way a little wrinkle of a frown appears between her eyes every time he does it. It's only fair that she get to be the uncomfortable one every once and a while.

She makes a small sound of annoyance, and Daniel smiles to himself. Glancing around, he's surprised that none of the Tok'ra are here to meet them, just three cargo ships sitting in the sun. Hell, he thought _someone_ would bother to come up. He wanders towards a small strand of trees, trying to remember exactly where the rings are.

"There," Vala says, pointing off to the right.

He looks at her in surprise, but she's already turned away, walking unerringly to a small break in the bushes that looks familiar. Crossing over to stand next to her, he asks, "How did you know-?"

She tugs him closer as the rings sweep up and around them, slamming his body up against hers, but also keeping his heel from getting clipped.

"Thanks," he mutters, stepping quickly back away.

She gives him a toothy smile, one she probably uses to get whatever she wants out of people. "I'll just add it to the list."

Daniel frowns. He has zero doubt that she's keeping one; he just doesn't want to contemplate what the final payment may be.

"Uh, hello," a familiar voice says, and it's only then that Daniel that they've been deposited in the underground cave. Jacob and a dozen other Tok'ra are standing in a circle a short distance away. Something about the positioning and the atmosphere of the room tells Daniel they have stumbled into the middle of a ceremony of some kind.

"I'm sorry," he says. "We didn't mean to interrupt."

Jacob waves away the apology, the group breaking up. "We were done."

Daniel waits while Jacob speaks quietly to a few Tok'ra before crossing over to greet them.

"Hey, Jacob," Daniel says, gesturing to Vala. "Do you know Vala Mal Doran?" As a friend of Jack's, Daniel doesn't know how much experience she's had with the Tok'ra.

The slight widening of Jacob's eyes clues Daniel in that an introduction may not have been necessary. In an instant he can see that there's a history here way beyond Jack. One he's clearly missing big pieces to, but he can see it, the way Vala doesn't back down, her gaze steady, even as Jacob's eyes slide over and around and through her, never quite touching.

Guilt. The universal language.

"Oh," Vala says with a careless wave. "The Tok'ra and I are old friends."

Daniel doesn't miss Jacob's wince.

He'd love to ask exactly what this is all about, but one of the Tok'ra reappears at Jacob's side.

"It is done, Selmak," she says, bowing her head.

"Good," Selmak replies. "Head to the surface with the others."

Now Daniel can hear the telltale liquid hum echoing down the tunnel. Turning, he can see the light of the next hallway collapsing.

"You're destroying the base?" Daniel asks, surprised.

Jacob turns back to watch the tunnel collapse in liquid light. "One way or another, we're closing up shop."

Anubis has undermined their very purpose, erased patterns and hierarchies they have depended upon for centuries, just as he'd done to the Jaffa. If there are no more Goa'uld, in the service of Anubis or otherwise, they have nothing to masquerade as, nothing to mimic. They have tried to shift to smugglers and information gatherers, but it's always had the feeling of a stopgap measure, not a role that actually fit.

The time of the Tok'ra is near an end.

Vala's eyes bore into Jacob's back, but Daniel can't quite read her expression. Not satisfaction so much as…grim understanding?

She turns, catching Daniel watching her. She lifts one eyebrow as if to say, 'Are we going to stand around here all day or what?'

She's right. They need to leave now if they are going to make the rendezvous in time. They don't have time for puzzles and unspoken mysteries. Not even a moment to spare to grapple with the precarious future of the Tok'ra.

"Jacob," Daniel says, touching his arm.

Jacob recovers, tearing his eyes away from the display. "Right. Of course," he says. "We're ready."

* * *

Teal'c stands on a low rise, supervising the delivery of cargo from the Omega Site to Hak'tyl. He had thought the sheer number of weapons provided for his strike force was overly ambitious, knowing the number of able-bodied Jaffa to be depleted to practically nothing.

But the valley below is dotted with a great many tents, dozens of figures moving closer to help distribute the supplies, to hear the details of the battle plan.

Teal'c mentally tallies the warriors, noting class and caste, the symbols on their foreheads. It's a tiny glimmer of what he had always hoped for—horus guard next to serpent, symbols mixing and blurring and lines no longer so clearly drawn. They are Jaffa, not enemy soldiers. And moving between them with confidence and east, the Hak'tyl women, geared for battle.

The last great Jaffa army.

Ishta appears by his side, following the line of his gaze.

"I did not expect so many," he confesses.

"They do not fight for Earth," she says, her voice soft. There is no heat in the words, no callous disregard for the suffering of the Tau'ri, but rather a careful truth. When the call came, it was not the fate of Earth that drew them. They do not fight for territory, they do not fight for lords, they fight for nothing less than their very existence, their way of life.

They travel to Earth together, perhaps to the end of their kind. But perhaps a foundation too.

This march is all they have left.

"Come," Ishta says, drawing him away back towards the gate.

Sergeant Lee meets them at the platform. "This is the last of them," he says, gesturing at a pile of long, thin crates.

Ishta touches the top crate. "Are these the items I requested from Dr. McKay?"

"Yes, Ma'am," Lee confirms.

Teal'c watches with interest as she opens the crate, not knowing what request she has made of Rodney McKay. She pulls out a staff weapon, and it is only after a moment of inspection that he realizes it has been modified to fire the drone pulse.

Ishta turns to him, holding the staff out in offering. "It is time you carried your staff once more, Jaffa."

Teal'c swallows, feeling pressure crawling up his throat. He curls his fingers around the cool metal, feels the weight pull and tug at his shoulders.

"I thank you," he says, words hoarse with the weight of nostalgia, of _rightness_.

She nods. "Welcome home."

* * *

Jack hunches over a worn piece of paper, the hum of the ship quiet under his body.

The last day has been about pen and paper and draining important thoughts out before they disappear. There's no English left, just the tick of the pen in short lines and dots that Jack can only hope will make more sense to Daniel than they do to him. It's important.

There's always been something more to Anubis. Even Anhur, as useless as he was, was enough to confirm this. And now with the Ancient knowledge unspooling…it's there, just right out of reach.

His pen continues to tick along.

It means something. _Something_.

His fist hits his thigh in frustration.

"Jack," Carter says, voice cautious.

She's never far now, eyes following him (no longer filled with anger or accusation or even sadness, but back-breaking _resolve_), tracking his each and every slip, never quite able to hide a flinch every time a foreign word escapes. It was a relief when the chaos in his mind finally swallowed his ability to speak all together. Words have never done anything but trip them up.

He can hear it sometimes, the echoes of a thousand conversations between them, ones said and ones not and some he thinks he maybe only ever had in his head. He can't be sure.

Closing his eyes, he breathes out. It's getting harder, holding on to things. His hand clenches, but the pen still clatters to the floor. He gropes for it, knowing there are more things to be written more half-formed thoughts to purge, but Cater gets there first.

"Enough," she says, picking up the pen, slipping it into her pocket and out of reach. "That's enough."

He tries to find any last vestige of fight left, but the truth is that he's slipping faster than ever, and she knows it. It's over. It's about time his body admitted what his mind has long known.

He holds the papers out to her.

She takes them cautiously, her eyes sliding incomprehensibly across the lines of symbols. "Daniel?" she asks.

He nods, wanting to emphasize how important this is, but not having the words. The way she carefully folds them and tucks them into her pocket tells him that she knows anyway.

It's all he can do.

"You should rest," she says, hovering near his elbow.

He pushes to his feet, automatically turning towards his berth, but she gestures towards the center of the hold instead. He's not sure why, but doesn't have the words to argue anyway. Clearing a stack of boxes, he sees that she's set up a rudimentary pallet on top of a low collection of crates. It's only when he lies down that he gets it.

She's left the doors to the front cabin open, giving Jack a clear view of the stars flying past them. Lying there watching them, they give him the illusion of falling fast, tumbling downward.

It's nothing he hasn't seen a thousand times before, streaking beams of light speeding past him, but he can't quite remember the last time he actually watched them. The feeble attempt resurrects a barrage of half-forgotten missions, close calls, and being so painfully alive. There's nothing untouched or solid enough to latch onto anymore though. He doesn't try. Holding on only makes things slip faster.

He closes his eyes.

When next he wakes, she's lying next to him.

She's not touching him, a nice careful distance between their bodies, but she's there, being here with him, staring out at the stars as they streak past. Even with the lights turned down, there is just enough starlight to see her face, and, God, she's still so damn beautiful.

He tenses as the dangerous thought fills his mind, waiting for the inevitable.

It doesn't come.

There's nothing in here but him now, him and the culmination of knowledge of a species far more advanced than any of them dared imagine. Wisdom too, which he hadn't expected. It fills all the dark spaces, pushing out anything extraneous.

Smothering that dark voice.

He says the only word he has left. "Carter."

Moving inch by inch in a slow crawl that only either of them could ever appreciate, her hand crosses the space between their bodies, fingers brushing across the back of his hand.

It's the first time she's willingly touched him, made that move across the impenetrable distance between them.

He turns his hand, his palm opening, and feels her fingers thread through his.

Somehow, it doesn't feel like he's falling quite so fast anymore.


	23. Earth

**Chapter Six: Earth**

"We're approaching the rendezvous point, sir."

Jason Reynolds acknowledges his navigator with a nod. The hyperdrive countdown shows less then five minutes until they will arrive in the space surrounding Earth. Five minutes until they finally go home.

They're ready for this. Two years of careful planning, building relationships with allies, layering contingency after contingency, and all that's left to do is execute.

They revert back to normal space, and they are no longer alone because by their side is the rest of the fleet, a mix of makes and models and species, all honed to a single sharp-edged sword.

A fleet large enough to outnumber even Anubis's.

"Pick up designated targets and fire all weapons," Jason orders.

All around them the fleet opens fire, catching Anubis's floundering ships completely off-guard. The first ha'tak explodes, easily overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Jason lets himself feel an imprudent spark of relief. They're going to pull this off.

"Sir! There's movement near the Moon!"

Jason whips his head around, taking in the data coming in. A second fleet they didn't know about? Or backup arriving already? It would be too much to hope that one last Asgard ship has decided to appear out of the mists, but his mind goes there, goes everywhere, the battle still sharp and furious around them.

But it isn't a second fleet that slowly appears out of the shadows. It's a single ship. Not Asgard. But something absolutely enormous, so big that it had taken an entire moon to properly hide it.

"What the hell is that?" the navigator blurts, horror squeezing his voice.

It's like a giant, fat spider hovering on the edge of its carefully spun web. Patient, confident.

Utterly unsurprised.

The ruthless stab of adrenaline crystallizes everything in Jason's mind. He can see it now, each tiny step, each dangled lure, how the pieces all come together to equal them offering up to Anubis the entirety of the last pockets of resistance in one fail swoop.

_Let them come to me._

"It's a trap," someone says, but Jason doesn't need the words. He already knows what he's done.

He's led them all to their deaths.

* * *

The ship lurches to the right, nearly unseating Rodney. He clamps on the edge of the consol and bites back a caustic remark about Cam's dubious flying abilities. The task at hand does not allow the extra computational distraction of articulating the perfectly cutting remark (yes, it is _that_ complicated), and if you aren't going to do it well, why bother?

Rodney's fingers fly over the controls, algorithms and numbers and variables aligning, slipping into place.

"Just one more…," he says, biting down on his lip.

The package disappears in a flash of white light.

"Done!" he crows, fist pumping in the air, adrenaline swamping his body. Add yet another impossible made possible to the CV of Dr. Rodney Freaking McKay.

"Finally," Cam shouts, the ship lurching yet again, rocking under what Rodney is only know registering are weapon's blasts. Can't a guy have at least one unmolested moment to revel in his genius?

"What the hell are you doing?" he demands, scrambling towards the front of the ship. They were supposed to stay way out of the fighting. They were _supposed_ to be cloaked.

Cam makes a sound alarmingly close to a growl. "I'm trying to keep us alive!"

Rodney doesn't remember anyone mentioning getting blown out of the sky being part of this particular mission. Of course, glancing at the scans of the battlefield as he settles into the second seat, he also doesn't remember any mention of a freaking gargantuan Death Star either.

"Looks like Anubis knew we were coming," Cam says, pitching the cargo ship into a tight roll that really shouldn't be possible. The walls around them groan in protest against the g-forces.

"Oh _really_!" Rodney yelps, wondering why the hell they never put seatbelts in these goddamned things. Something to bitch about at a later point in time, _if_ they survive.

One of the Valedian ships near them shatters in a ball of fire, Rodney flinching back from the light. Cam lets out a heartfelt string of curses that Rodney thinks are perfectly appropriate to the situation. After all, Anubis' ship is cutting through their forces with ease, and even he recognizes a losing battle when he sees one.

"Why don't they jump away?" he mutters, eyes darting across the information being pumped into his screen.

"I don't know," Cam says, his voice strained as he zags them through another physics-defying set of maneuvers.

Then all the information crystallizes in front of him crystallizes. "Because we can't," Rodney says, the color draining from his face. "There's some sort of field being generated by that overgrown ship. It's making it impossible to create a stable hyperwindow."

There's a moment of silence as that information sinks in.

Another blast passes far too closely, the ship shuddering in its wake. "So you're saying we're stuck here," Cam says.

Rodney nods. "We're stuck." And _dead_. This last long shot seems to have been just a bit too long.

Cam's face hardens. "Okay then. Let's take as many of these bastards out as we can then."

Rodney glances down at Earth below them. He gets one last glimpse, and then Cam slams the ship into motion.

* * *

Sam and Jack lurch out of hyperspace into a war zone.

It takes Sam a moment to reconcile what she's seeing, the dizzying sweep of smaller vessels in between ha'taks, and in the distance, a hulking ship larger than anything she has ever seen before. She recovers long enough to engage the cloak, swerving to avoid a collision with a death glider.

"They pushed up the attack," she says, finally locating the lone Earth-designed ship out in the chaos. Why the hell would they push up the attack?

A single shot from the behemoth of a ship arcs across the battlefield and a ha'tak explodes. Sam winces back from the flash of light, the loss of precious life. Holy God, this must be how Abydos died.

She knows then that even if they can get rid of the drones, get past that hurdle, there's nothing to stop Anubis from just cutting his losses and blasting what's left of Earth into nothing more than space dust.

"We're too late," she whispers, horror in her stomach.

Jack bumps into her, his hand insistent on her shoulder as he shoves her out of the way. He takes the controls from her and she doesn't know what else to do but let him.

She glances at his determined face, the hard line of his jaw beneath the sheen of sweat on his face. Is this what he somehow knew? Why they rushed back here? It seems too much of a coincidence not to be. But rather than jumping into the fray, he banks the ship away, slipping down into the atmosphere of the planet.

She wants to ask where they are going, but knows there isn't any point. He's on autopilot now, his body moving through the motions with no trace of thought, no light left in his failing body.

Jack's already long gone.

It threatens to paralyze her for a moment, this terrible realization, but she hasn't come this far, pressed through each and every painful crawling step just to fall apart at the penultimate moment. This is what he wants, she reminds herself.

For once, she will be strong enough to respect that.

He settles them over what looks to her like nothing more than an endless stretch of ice. Jumping out of the seat, he rushes back to the cargo hold.

"Jack," she says, but he doesn't slow down, returning to the rings with the stained glass cone from the Ancient compound, pausing only long enough to shove a thick parka into her hands, not bothering with one for himself.

He looks at her expectantly, his eyes connecting with her and for the smallest moment it feels like _him_, asking her to trust him just one more time.

She pulls the parka on, stepping up next to him on the platform. "I'm ready."

* * *

Daniel kneels near the escape pods, trying to hold himself steady as Jacob twists and winds the ship down through the battlefield.

"A cloak won't keep them from blasting us out of the sky by accident," Vala hisses from next to him, her face pale and drawn.

Daniel glances at her, but doesn't respond. So far the mission to take back Earth hasn't gone exactly to plan, but that isn't exactly unusual for them. Frankly, he'd be more surprised if it had gone to plan. He doesn't think she'd find that particularly comforting though, so keeps it to himself.

"Face it," Vala snaps. "Anubis knew you were coming!"

"Apparently," Daniel says, relaxing a bit as the ship dips into the relative safety of the lower atmosphere. Considering what's waiting for them below, that really says something about the chaos of the battlefield they've just escaped.

"You can't mean to go through with this," Vala shouts, her voice going a bit shrill with disbelief.

"We stick to the plan," Jacob says, his face grim. "Take the gate, let the force from Hak'tyl through, and take the compound."

"But that ship-," Vala protests.

"We stick to the plan," Jacob persists with the insistence of one with nothing left to lose.

Daniel sees Vala's hand twitch, and wonders if that is her sense of self-preservation kicking in. She must be wishing she'd been smart enough to walk away now. He wonders if he'll ever get the chance to find out why she didn't.

Then the tel'tak touches down with a soft thump and there's no more time for second-guessing.

* * *

Teal'c stands in front of the rippling waters of a wormhole, Ishta by his side. On the other side lies the planet where all of this began, not just the battle with Anubis, the rebellion, but the very origin of their kind. The original world.

Earth.

Teal'c lifts his radio. "Daniel Jackson, this is Teal'c. Are you in position?"

There is a moment of static before a familiar voice answers. "You are clear to come through," Daniel Jackson says.

Ishta steps forward, eager to begin this fight, but Teal'c holds her back. Keying the radio, he speaks into it. "How is the weather today, Daniel Jackson?"

The prescribed answer comes immediately. "Nice and sunny with winds from the Northwest. Perfect barbeque weather."

Teal'c feels his stomach settle. "We are on our way."

He pauses at the wormhole, turning back to see the wave of Jaffa behind him. Many watch him with expressions he knows well—anticipation, expectation—like they have mistaken him for their leader. Like he is a man who has answers he does not.

But in this one last thing, he can do his duty to them.

"Jaffa," he calls, his voice loud and clear over the meadow. "_Ai'emain_!"

The shuffling crowd falls silent, backs straightening, emotions pulling taut.

Teal'c faces them with legs braced wide, staff firm and unyielding against the stone platform. He lets the silence stretch long as he moves his eyes across the crowd, making each warrior feel seen and acknowledged. Counted.

"Today is the day we take our revenge," he says. "The day we wipe one final false god and tyrant from the galaxy. Today we cast off our yokes and face our fate with open hearts and clear minds, knowing right will prevail. We will not falter. We will not fail. We are Jaffa."

He lifts his staff above his head. "_Shel kek nem ron_!"

An answering cry rings loud over the rattle of weapons lifted in proud fists.

He turns to Ishta, his voice softening. "Today, I die free."

"Perhaps," she says, comfortable with that fate. But then her lips quirk with the impertinent self-confidence that he has grown to love so well. "Though if given the choice, I will _live_ free."

He touches her cheek. "So may it be."

For all Jaffa.

* * *

The rings deposit Sam and Jack into what at first glance looks like an ice cave. She fights of a wave of déjà vu, the press of being trapped, the way the cold air bites and tugs at her skin.

Watching him die.

_Nothing you can do to change that._

Jack strides out into the space, seemingly unhampered by the lack of light or lack of familiarity with the space, like he's been here before. Sam forces her feet to follow. In the dim blue light, she can make out shapes and spaces, little more than shadows. The passage opens out into a large room, an ornate chair isolated in the middle.

Jack paces straight past it, kneeling in front of a hatch and sliding the stained-glass cone into place. The walls around them creak and hum, the rumble of long-slumbering technology shaking itself awake.

Jack approaches the chair, settling into it like he somehow belongs there. It seems to know him, coming to life under his touch. She watches man and chair shifting and expanding to accommodate each other.

His hands dig into the soft gel of the armrests, panels and displays lighting in a ring around the walls. Sam steps closer to one, ancient words flying across the screen at an alarming pace. But next to it, a visual display of the battle being waged far, far above them.

A battle being lost.

"Jack," Sam says, turning back to look at him.

The chair snaps backwards, lying Jack out flat, his face staring unseeing at the ceiling.

The compound screams to life.

* * *

Teal'c ducks back behind the frame of the door, barely missing getting hit by drone fire. He darts a glance at Daniel Jackson on the other side, his eyes automatically sweeping his body for sign of injury. He can just make out the hard profile of Vala Mal Doran pressed against Daniel Jackson's back, keeping their retreat clear.

Satisfied, Teal'c sucks in a breath and drops to a crouch, pivoting on the ball of his foot and sweeping his staff around the jamb. He feels the foreign surge of energy through his weapon as the blue pulses hit their targets, black-clad drones tumbling to the floor.

"Clear!" a voice calls from the other side.

Teal'c has to step over the body of a fallen Jaffa to enter the hall, but does not pause to mourn or identify, merely pushes onward, feeling the momentum building as they penetrate further and further into Anubis' palace.

The next section of the complex opens out into a large atrium with high ceilings and a bank of windows and balconies. A good location for a trap.

"There are too few," Ishta observes, flattening herself against the wall on his side.

Teal'c nods, having noticed this as well. The drone soldiers, having realized their vulnerability, have more than likely calculated the wisdom of regrouping and using their numbers against the intruders. This is a problem, because even if Anubis' soldiers fall easily to the drone weapon, their sure aim is still just as deadly to their side.

Teal'c has never been more aware of the preciousness of each and every individual life, these few Jaffa left who fight. His training names this a weakness.

"We must proceed with caution," he says.

She nods, slipping down the hall with a handful of her warriors to circle around to the side. On the proper count, they sweep into the space, weapons at the ready. There is no one there.

The atrium remains empty, but the tightness in Teal'c's neck does not dissipate.

"Teal'c," Daniel Jackson calls. He stands at the bank of windows, pointing up towards the sky. "What is that?"

Teal'c crosses to his side, staring up at yellow lights like comets streaking upwards into the atmosphere. "I do not know."

Yet another new weapon Anubis has discovered to use against them?

"Teal'c, watch out!" Daniel Jackson shouts.

He twists to one side, but not quickly enough, because the awaited ambush has finally materialized with brutal force, a blast catching his shoulder, his weapon clattering uselessly to the floor as a wave of drones sets upon them from the shadows.

Far too many.

"Teal'c!" someone shouts, but everything around him has slowed to painful stillness, his body straining to reach the fallen weapon, every detail and sensation pitilessly sharp.

The drone presses his advantage. It will not miss a second time.

Across the compound, Ishta turns, the light rippling across her hair. Her mouth opens, weapon lifting.

It will not be in time.

His thoughts, as he watches death coming, turn to Rya'c and Bra'tac, to father and son and comrade—the future he meant to give them, if only he could have.

But before the final shot comes, there is an enormous rumbling explosion, a sonic pulse that makes the air vibrate around them.

The drone stops.

All of the drones stop.

* * *

For a while it's like Jack is no longer in his body but floating above Earth. He's flying with the streaks of light as they zoom in and out of Anubis' fleet. He's standing in front of Anubis sitting on his giant throne, staring straight into that fathomless emptiness that isn't a face.

"You," Anubis hisses.

Jack sees him. Sees exactly what he is, the pieces sliding into place. "Time's up," Jack says.

Anubis's hands lift, a deep groan of protest rising from his body that is nothing but a shell.

Everything dissolves into a giant flash of light, other beings pressing in close, watching, and it's so damn beautiful, the way everything flies apart at the seams.

The span of a breath and Jack is slamming back down into the chair, trapped once more in the heavy material of his failing body.

"Anubis's fleet," Carter is saying, her voice sounding as if from a great distance. "It's gone. Just…gone."

It's done.

There's still a long, messy battle to be fought for Earth. He's just evened the odds a bit, taken the false god out of the equation. For now. He hopes it's enough.

It will have to be.

"Jack?" Carter asks.

He blinks, his lids heavy and nearly impossible to lift again.

"Jack," she says, her voice rushing back across the room, her body pressing near.

With great effort, he opens his eyes to find her leaning over him, and it could just as easily be that dark night over five years ago on Cimmeria. The night he hadn't bothered to fight, welcoming the promise of blackness, not wanting the life she had forced upon him. But today she doesn't beg, words or not. She doesn't ask him to fight or hang on, just stands over him with tears in her eyes, but resolve on her face.

She's letting him go.

It's his choice this time. Beneath everything buzzing in his mind, the confusion and pain, he at least knows that. This is his choice to make. Not hers, not Anhur's. He gets to decide his end.

This is what he's always wanted, the thing he's been hunting for so damn long—a significant death, a purposeful death. He's saving his entire planet with this sacrifice. His debt paid in full.

He's free.

No mission, no responsibility trapping him in place. He just has to let go. Finally.

But as he sits with Carter staring down at him and his mind crumbling into chaos with the Ancient's hard won secrets only getting louder, he finally understands that there really isn't such thing as a good death. That's just another myth he's been chasing. He owes that to her at least, being honest about the fact that this isn't heroism—it's indulgence. An exit plan disguised as sacrifice.

He looks up into her face, and she somehow manages a smile for him, the fractured gesture squeezing out the tears she's been trying to hide. "It's okay, Jack," she says, her words shaky, but resolute. "It's okay." Her voice cracks, falters, but she pushes on. "You don't have to fight anymore."

She's trying to tell him she understands his choice, trying to make it easy for him, despite what it costs her. It should be a comfort—absolution from the one place he never thought to find it. Only there's something else welling up in his chest now as he looks at her, drowning the relief.

Carter leans closer to him, her whispered words nothing more than a hum now, but he can see it in her gaze that she's going to be here until the very end. One more impossible task she's incapable of walking away from. And, God, there it is, a well of feeling he thought lost, destroyed, or maybe just mutilated beyond recognition. But it's here, hiding underneath all the wreckage—different maybe, changed, but whole and rooted bone deep.

Somehow, no matter how mixed up everything is, he finally gets it, the fundamental truth sliding into place as she stands there being so damn brave, letting him go.

None of this has ever been about who owes who, about some invisible score. It's not even about the goddamn snake. The dead don't matter.

Only the living.

He tries to say her name, but the word that slips out is something else entirely, his choice made before he's completely aware of it. "_Dormata_," he whispers. It's a tiny chance and nothing more, but it's his choice, his decision.

His.

Carter spends a precious second staring down at him in confusion, trying to puzzle out what this means. He tries to repeat the word, to imbue it with urgency, but can't quite manage it. His eyes flick past her to the device he recognized on the way in, the salvation it represents. The small motion is almost too much, but it isn't wasted on her, her eyes lifting and latching on to the machine.

She hesitates, no doubt thrown by this abrupt change in plans. Her indecision doesn't last though. Another precious tick of the clock and she's hefting him to his feet. He wishes he could help but it's taking every ounce of concentration not to give in to the seductive, silent blackness hovering right around his edges.

He so longs for the quiet.

Somehow she manages to drag him across the room and lift him into the space, and he never should have doubted her considering all the miraculous things he's seen her do. His head rests back against the wall as he summons his last bit of energy to communicate with the device.

Instead of moving away though, Carter steps even closer, one hand lifting to his face, hesitating just before making contact, her palm pressing to his cheek. She holds there, the warmth of her skin in stark contrast to the ice all around them.

"Jack," she says, her voice loaded with things it might take a lifetime to decipher.

He thinks maybe she understands now too.

She steps back and he sends the command, feels the energy of the technology surge up around him.

"_Unam sumis_," he whispers as the ice crawls up his body, her face wavering in his vision.

She's the last thing he sees.


	24. Epilogue to Part 3

**epilogue**

On Earth, a young woman looks out over what had once been a town square, her eyes pulled upwards above the trees and grass. An explosion of light is melting down through the blue summer sky like rain turned to fire. Despite the spectacular display, there are no other curious faces in the windows on the square, all the shutters closed tight. Even still they must see it, this light show in the sky, must know what it means. But they are too browbeat, too frightened to step outside, to risk betraying an emotion. To hope.

But Cassie knows what this is, has been waiting for it for two years.

Finally.

This town had once been called Attica, a tiny village among the fields of Kansas. Now it is a holding pen for survivors, small-town America reborn as a ghetto of a dying race. There are people here from all corners of the continent, drawn in out of desperation and the illusion of protection offered by the very being that conquered their planet.

_Worship and you will live._

They flocked here like chickens to a coop, the inhabitants too stupid to realize it's really only a slaughterhouse. Or maybe even the slaughterhouse was preferred to the impossible, horrific lives they could scrape together out in the world Anubis left them with: empty, shattered cities and roving bands of humans reverting to the lowest common denominator just to survive. Such a small amount of time to have forgotten so much evolution.

This is what is left of the planet her mother fell protecting, a planet Cassie refused to walk away from even when she had the chance. Not this time. Not again. Someone had to stay and fight. Stay and remember.

Plus, she's never been alone. Not completely. She is their eyes, a quiet whisper from the planet they've been exiled from. They always said they'd be back. In the meantime she would be what they need.

_Tok'anu_. The resistance.

She knows what the lights in the sky mean.

Abandoning her perch at the window, Cassie moves to the rear of her room. Behind a creaking wooden door is a staircase. She picks her way down the rickety steps into the cool darkness of the basement. The previous owner had outfitted his home well, his 1960s nuclear paranoia coming back to serve her well. The entrance to the bunker is barely visible unless you know where to look. Cassie pulls back the heavy lead doors, the hinges well oiled and maintained, sliding open with barely a whisper of sound.

Grabbing a lantern, Cassie lowers herself into the space below.

Where there had been bare floor only this morning, now there's a pile of crates, a note tacked to the top. She reaches for the thin slip of paper, her fingers running across the words.

_Thought you might be able to put these to good use. Red button = death to drones. One hit should do it. Be seeing you soon. -Mitchell_

Pushing off the top of the nearest crate, she reaches in and pulls out a P-90 that's been modified, a shiny red button on the side that screams to be pushed.

Looking up the stairs to the square of light above, she knows exactly what to do with it, this gift from the skies.

Outside, the square is quiet. The tall fences that mark the boundary of their coop glint brightly in the sunlight. There should be work happening all around, men offering passes to get out into the fields, women completing chores on the square, and small children getting their lessons in the shade of Anubis' statue. But no one is in sight.

Attica's jail keepers, two tall figures cloaked in black, impenetrable armor, stand as they always do at the gate, unaware of the shift around them. Nuance is not something they ever understood. Rules are rules. Crimes are crimes. And penalties are swift and final.

They don't move as Cassie approaches, docile like kittens despite the weapon in her hands—a visible violation of the cardinal rule of human rights. She thinks despite their outer calm they must be floundering in the wake of what she suspects—_prays_—is their master's fiery destruction. Their eerie motionlessness is just more proof. They're empty shells this way, animated flesh with no one to serve. Not that it changes anything. Her memory is long, even if theirs isn't.

She lifts her weapon, the red button smooth under the pad of her finger. The first one falls under the pulse like a sack of potatoes, the second merely looking down at its fallen companion in curiosity. Cassie doesn't give him time to figure it out.

When they are lying side by side on the ground like sick marionette dolls with their strings cut, Cassie turns to the imposing statue marring the center of the square, its empty face watching over the town, always watching. Candles and flowers and food and other forced offerings are nestled into place next to small notes begging for boons, for word of long-missing loved ones. _If you really are a god, have mercy._

Switching her P-90 back to bullets, she fires on the statue, pounding round after round into the heavy stone. Anubis's head severs at the neck, bouncing sickly down the path to come to rest in the gutter lining the street. There's a moment of heavy silence as if the entire town is waiting for the wrath of this supposed god to rain down in retaliation for her desecration.

It doesn't come. There's nothing but the warm prairie wind rising up over the town, untamed by boundaries or rules or oppressive domination.

No more false gods for Attica.

Around her, screen doors creak open, footsteps cautiously inching out into the sunlight.


End file.
